Yesterday the Court heard the final two oral arguments scheduled for this Term. In University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center v. Nassar, the Court is considering what standard of proof should apply to retaliation claims brought under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Coverage of the argument comes from Jesse J. Holland of The Associated Press. In Metrish v. Lancaster, the Court is considering whether Michigan’s abolition of the diminished capacity defense in criminal trials violated the Constitution. Lyle reports on the argument for this blog, with further coverage coming from Kent Scheidegger of the Crime and Consequences blog.
Other coverage focuses on last week’s decision in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum, in which the Court held that the Alien Tort Statute did not authorize a suit by Nigerian nationals against foreign corporations for their conduct abroad. Writing for Slate, Eric Posner praises the decision for “[getting] rid of a popular but unworkable idea that U.S. courts can be used to police behavior around the world,” while Michael Dorf argues in his Verdict column for Justia that “despite condemnation of the Kiobel decision from those who are sympathetic to human rights lawsuits . . . the ruling appears to leave open at least three potential avenues for ATS litigation.” In a follow-up post at Dorf on Law, he also argues that “Kiobel may not prove so ruinous for human rights litigation in the U.S. courts” for another reason – it did not “cut back on the power of U.S. courts to recognize international law as federal common law” under Article III.
At Appellate Daily, Michelle Olsen discusses a circuit split involving unlicensed casket sellers, after the Fifth Circuit recently struck down a Louisiana regulation allowing only licensed funeral homes to sell caskets. Damon W. Root of Reason notes that the dispute might be “the Court’s next big economic liberty case.”
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