Thursday round-up

CORMAC EARLY MAY 2, 2013 12:27 PM

We have changed our round-up format!  In an effort to simplify the process for our round-up team, going forward we will only include in the round-up news articles and posts that are submitted to us.  If you have (or know of) an article or post that you would like to have included in the round-up, please send a link to roundup [at] scotusblog.com so that we can consider it.

Retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s recent remarks to the editorial board of The Chicago Tribune, in which she suggested that the Court should have denied review in Bush v. Gore, drew further coverage yesterday.  In her Opinionator column for The New York Times, Linda Greenhouse argues that “it’s her legacy that Justice O’Connor cares about and that she sees imperiled by a Supreme Court that the Bush administration pushed rightward by naming Samuel A. Alito Jr. to succeed her,” while Emily Bazelon of Slate argues that “[i]f anything, O’Connor’s late expression of doubts makes her vote in Bush v. Gore seem all the more partisan.” And at The New Republic, Linda Hirshman discusses a 1988 letter from Justice O’Connor to Senator Barry Goldwater in which she expressed support for presidential candidate George H.W. Bush, describing it as “It is vital for the Court and the nation that he” win; Hirshman cites the letter as evidence that “at least at one point, she too saw the Court as a political body.” [Disclosure:  The law firm of Thomas C. Goldstein, P.C., now known as Goldstein & Russell, P.C., whose attorneys work for or contribute to this blog in various capacities, was among the counsel to respondent Al Gore in that case.]

Other coverage focused on cases currently before the Court. In a guest column for Jurist, Bruce Abramson argues that the Court should allow the patenting of human genes in Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc. And at Patently-O, Myriad’s Benjamin Jackson lists nine reasons why the Court should uphold the company’s patent. The Associated Press (via The Birmingham News) reports on a bus tour of Alabama and Mississippi by activists urging the Court to uphold Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder. [Disclosure: Goldstein & Russell, P.C., whose attorneys work for or contribute to this blog in various capacities, is among the counsel to Representative F. James Sensenbrenner et al., who filed an amicus brief in support of the respondent in this case.] And MSNBC‘s Dominic Perella reports on the government’s cert. petition in National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning, which asks the Justices to overturn a D.C. Circuit decision that limited the President’s power to make recess appointments.

Briefly:

• Stephen Wermiel has a new post in this blog’s SCOTUS for law students series, contrasting Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin with Schuette v Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, two cases involving different aspects of race-based affirmative action. [Disclosure: Goldstein & Russell, P.C., whose attorneys work for or contribute to this blog in various capacities, also represented the American Association of Law Schools as amicus curiae in this case.]
• The Constitutional Accountability Center has released a report on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s success at the Court in recent Terms.
• Zoe Tillman of the Blog of Legal Times reports that Antoine Jones, the defendant in last Term’s GPS tracking case, United States v. Jones, has pled guilty in his fourth trial for a drug conspiracy charge.
• Damon W. Root of Reason discusses Monday’s decision in McBurney v. Young, in which the Court unanimously held that Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act, granting Virginia residents access to all public records but withholding such rights from non-Virginians, does not violate the Privileges and Immunities Clause or the dormant Commerce Clause.
• Luke Rioux discusses the decision in Moncrieffe v. Holder, in which the Court held that when a noncitizen’s conviction for a marijuana distribution offense fails to establish that the offense involved either remuneration or more than a small amount of marijuana, it is not an aggravated felony under the Immigration and Nationality Act, at his blog, Harmless Error. [Disclosure: Goldstein & Russell, P.C., whose attorneys work for or contribute to this blog in various capacities, represents the petitioner in this case.]

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