Friday round-up
on Aug 3, 2012 at 9:25 am
Briefly:
- At this blog, former Solicitor General Charles Fried analyzes what he describes as the “four surprises” of the Court’s decision in the health care cases.
- Chris Geidner of Buzzfeed reports on the brief filed before the Court by the Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders in the challenges to the Defense of Marriage Act.
- The Blog of Legal Times previews a panel discussion this Friday at the American Bar Association’s annual meeting, in which Justice Ginsburg and Solicitor General Don Verrilli will join others in discussing the relationships between operatic arias and the law.
- Writing at Reason, Damon W. Root creates a list of the ten most libertarian Supreme Court decisions. At the Volokh Conspiracy, Ilya Somin has additional commentary on Root’s list.
- At ACSblog, Nicole Flatow reports on an ACS video webinar with Valerie Newman on her experience representing the respondent at oral argument this past Term in Lafler v. Cooper, in which the Court expanded the right to effective assistance of counsel into the plea-bargaining stage.
- At her On the Case blog for Thomson Reuters, Alison Frankel summarizes the arguments against extraterritorial application of the Alien Tort Statute made by the respondents’ supplemental brief before the Court in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum, which the Court has scheduled for reargument this fall.
- ProPublica explores states’ varied responses to the Court’s consolidated opinion in Miller v. Alabama and Jackson v. Hobbs, in which it struck down mandatory life-without-parole sentences for juveniles, particularly regarding whether the opinion applies retroactively to juveniles previously sentenced under these laws.
- Writing for the American Bar Association, Professor Rory Little summarizes the Court’s opinion this past Term in Williams v. Illinois, in which the Court held that the Confrontation Clause had not been violated where expert testimony was admitted regarding DNA testing performed by other, non-testifying analysts.
- At the Opinionator blog of The New York Times, Timothy Egan revisits Justice Scalia’s recent interview with Piers Morgan, particularly its discussion of Citizens United v. FEC.
- NPR previews the legal challenges to the constitutionality of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act that the Court might consider this upcoming Term.
