Friday round-up

MARISSA MILLER JAN 27, 2012 10:03 AM

Today’s clippings include further commentary on the Court’s decision in the GPS tracking case, United States v. Jones, as well as continuing coverage of the challenge to the Affordable Care Act.

Writing for the Huffington Post, Susan Landau argues that the Jones decision is merely “one small step for privacy,” given that private companies can still collect sensitive information with few restrictions. Editorials in the Vallejo (Cal.) Times Herald and the Beaufort (N.C.) Observer take a similar view.

At the WSJ Law Blog, Louise Radnofsky reports on the results of a new poll by the Kaiser Foundation showing that a majority of Americans – fifty-four percent of those responding – believe that the Court should hold that the individual mandate is unconstitutional. At Fox News, Shannon Bream discusses the ongoing debate over whether Justice Elena Kagan should recuse herself from the health care cases, noting that in a 2010 case involving a challenge to a San Francisco health measure the office of then-Solicitor General Kagan filed an amicus brief touting the Affordable Care Act. At Concurring Opinions, Nicole Huberfeld explores some of themes and strategies reflected in the amicus briefs supporting the argument that the Medicaid expansion is unconstitutionally coercive.  And Politico’s Jennifer Haberkorn reports on efforts by House Republicans to repeal various portions of the ACA.

Briefly:

• Writing for the Huffington Post, Michelle Chen argues that Coleman v. Maryland Court of Appeals, in which the Court is considering whether a provision of the Family and Medical Leave Act violates the Eleventh Amendment, is not “just a question of workers’ medical rights when they fall seriously ill, but of the state’s obligation to its employees.”
• Melissa Toupin of New England Cable News reports that Justice Clarence Thomas has received an honorary degree from Holy Cross.
• Arvin Temkar at Pacific Daily News provides coverage of Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s visit to Guam.
• In a story for the New Yorker, Hendrik Hertzberg praises Rick Perry’s proposal to pass a constitutional amendment creating eighteen-year terms for the Justices on the Court, staggered every two years so that one of the Justices would be replaced every other year.
• The AP‘s Andrew Welsh-Huggins covers the Court’s denial of cert. in The Republica Bolivariana de Venezuela v. DRFP, L.L.C., in which an Ohio investment group seeks to collect $100 million on three-decade-old Venezuelan promissory notes.

 

 

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