Wednesday round-up

CONOR MCEVILY SEP 26, 2012 10:40 AM

Following Monday’s “Long Conference,” yesterday the Court granted certiorari in six new cases and overturned a lower-court ruling on new election districts for West Virginia’s congressional representatives.  The Court’s full order list can be found here.  In addition to Lyle’s general coverage of the grants for this blog, Jesse J. Holland at the Associated Press observes that two of the cases in which the Court granted review yesterday were “filed by two people who couldn’t afford or didn’t bother to hire an attorney.”

Yesterday’s grant in Missouri v. McNeely, in which the Court will consider whether police can take a blood sample from an allegedly drunk driver without a warrant to prevent any alcohol in the blood from dissipating over time, received the most coverage, from Greg Stohr of Bloomberg News, David G. Savage of the Los Angeles Times, Terry Baynes and Jonathan Stempel of Reuters, Warren Richey of The Christian Science Monitor, and the Associated Press (via The Washington Post).

The cert. grant in Gabelli v. Securities and Exchange Commission, in which the Court will consider how to calculate the five-year limitation on the SEC’s power to impose a penalty for securities fraud, generated coverage from Greg Stohr of Bloomberg News, Jonathan Stempel and Sarah N. Lynch of Reuters, and the Associated Press (via The Washington Post).

Yesterday the Court also issued an unsigned ruling in Tennant v. Jefferson County Commission, a West Virginia congressional redistricting case in which the Court held that the three-judge district court was wrong to require that there be virtually no difference in population between the House districts drawn up after the 2010 Census.  Lyle provides extensive analysis of the decision at this blog; additional coverage comes from Greg Stohr of Bloomberg News, Adam Liptak of The New York Times, Terry Baynes and Jonathan Stempel of Reuters, Bill Mears of CNN, Brent Kendall of The Wall Street Journal (subscription required), Ruthann Robson at the Constitutional Law Prof Blog, Kent Scheidegger at Crime and Consequences, and the Associated Press (via The Washington Post).

In other news, yesterday the Court refused to halt the execution of Cleve Foster, a Texas death row inmate who maintained his innocence; Bill Chappell at NPR’s The Two-Way blog and Kent Scheidegger of Crime and Consequences have coverage; Michael Graczyk of the Associated Press reports that Foster was executed two hours later.

Briefly:

• At Constitutional Law Prof Blog, Ruthann Robson highlights the review by retired Justice John Paul Stevens of Sanford Levinson’s new book Framed: America’s 51 Constitutions and the Crisis of Governance in the New York Review of Books (which Kiran covered in yesterday’s round-up).
• In anticipation of next month’s oral argument in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, C-SPAN Radio replays recordings of the 2003 oral arguments in Grutter v. Bollinger; Amy Howe of this blog provides commentary.
• At Greenwire, Lawrence Hurley covers the upcoming Term’s cases touching on environmental and energy-related issues, including two Clean Water Act cases, Decker v. Northwest Environmental Defense Center and Los Angeles County Flood Control District v. Natural Resources Defense Council.
• At NBC News, Tom Curry reports that “recent polling both nationally and in key battleground states like Ohio has conservatives concerned about the impact President Obama could have on the judiciary in a second term.”
• At Slate, Emily Bazelon previews a few of the high-profile cases to be argued in the October sitting, which begins on Monday:  Fisher, Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum, Ryan v. Gonzales, and Tibbals v. Carter.
• A University of Florida press release notes that Justice Thomas recently appeared at the University of Florida Levin College of Law.  A video of his remarks can be found here.  (Thanks to Howard Bashman for both links.)

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