Wednesday round-up

Most of yesterdays coverage focused on the Chief Justices year-end report on the federal judiciary, which Lyle covered for this blog. Other coverage came from David G. Savage of the Los Angeles Times, Ashby Jones of The Wall Street Journal (subscription required), and Robert Barnes of The Washington Post, all of whom note that the Chief Justices emphasis was on frugality, and that he repeated his call to fill vacancies on the federal bench.

Briefly:

• Dina El Boghdady of The Washington Post discusses Gabelli v. SEC, a case scheduled for oral argument next week; at issue in the case is how to calculate the five-year limitation on the SECs power to impose a penalty for securities fraud.
• At the Constitution Daily, Lyle Denniston discusses whether the First Amendment protects a for-profit corporations right to the free exercise of religion.
• In a letter to the editor of The Washington Post, Geoffrey Stone suggests that the Courts proper role is to respect and uphold reasonable judgments of the democratically elected branches of government except when there is compelling reason to distrust those judgments.
• Jason Kane of the PBS Newshour interviews Marcia Coyle of the National Law Journal about the prospect that other challenges to provisions of the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act could be returning to the Court soon.