Thursday round-up

By Kiran Bhat
on Sep 22, 2011 at 7:57 am

Last night the state of Georgia executed Troy Davis, convicted in 1989 of murdering an off-duty police officer, after the Court denied Davis’s request for a stay of execution. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, MSNBC, the Los Angeles Times, the WSJ Law Blog, SCOTUSblog and ABC News all have coverage of the Court’s denial of a stay.

As part of a discussion on race and affirmative action, Michelle Adams argues in the Room for Debate section of the New York Times both that Justice Kennedy is the “decider on so many matters of import on the Roberts Court” and that his “views on race are actually quite nuanced.” She posits that Justice Kennedy’s, and therefore the Court’s, view is that “government cannot be race conscious in the sense that it causes racial harm, but it can be race conscious is seeking to even the playing field and create opportunities for everyone to be included.”

Several Justices are in the public eye today. The Associated Press (via the Houston Chronicle) reports that tonight at the University of Colorado Law School, retired Justice John Paul Stevens will inaugurate a new lecture series that is named after him. Sarah Galer of UChicacgo News reports that Stevens will speak at the University of Chicago on October 3 to launch his memoir, Five Chiefs. Justice Breyer sat for an extended interview yesterday with Tom Ashbrook of NPR’s “On Point” yesterday. And Jeremy Leaming of ACSblog reports on a recent speech by Justice Scalia at the American Enterprise Institute, during which Scalia honored the scholar Walter Berns and criticized “living constitutionalists.”

Briefly:

• At Balkanization, Gerard Magliocca reviews arguments for and against granting cert. in Thomas More Law Center v. Obama, the petition seeking review of the Sixth Circuit’s decision rejecting a challenge to the Affordable Care Act.
• Carlyn Kolker of Thomson Reuters News & Insight reports that the Chief Justice recently “named eight judges to committee posts at the U.S. Judicial Conference, the governing body of the federal courts.”
• Writing in the New American, Jack Kenny reports that Connecticut Supreme Court Justice Richard N. Palmer, who was part of the four-to-three majority ruling in favor of the city in the eminent domain case Kelo v. New London, recently apologized to petitioner Susette Kelo and told her that he would have changed his vote had he known her full story.
• Gopal Ratnam of Bloomberg reports on a recent article published in the journal Nature which contends that the use of unmanned drones by military and police for tactical and surveillance purposes “is a Supreme Court case waiting to happen.”