Monday round-up

MARISSA MILLER JUN 10, 2013 9:11 AM

This weekend’s coverage of the Court continued to emphasize last week’s five-to-four decision in Maryland v.King, in which the Court upheld a Maryland law that authorizes the collection of DNA samples from individuals arrested for “serious crimes.”  UPI’s Michael Kirkland reports on both the decision and reactions to the ruling, which he describes as a “huge victory for law enforcement.”  At Jost on Justice, Kenneth Jost praises Justice Scalia’s “impassioned dissent” for recognizing that the majority’s opinion “discarded the most important of Fourth Amendment rules: no searches for evidence of crime without an individualized suspicion that the target may be guilty of the offense.” The Cato Institute has produced a short video on the decision, which features Walter Olson discussing government abuse of DNA testing and the wider implications of the case.

Other coverage focuses on when and how the Court might rule in some of the most highly anticipated decisions remaining this Term.  Observing at PrawfsBlawg that “the Court usually has all of its October opinions out before June, no matter how controversial the case,” Will Baude discusses some scenarios that might explain why the Court has not yet issued its opinion in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, the challenge to that school’s consideration of race in its undergraduate admissions process. And at CNN, Bill Mears looks at some of the issues and arguments in Fisher.

The upcoming decisions in Hollingsworth v. Perry, the challenge to California’s Proposition 8, and United States v. Windsor, the challenge to the federal Defense of Marriage Act, also generate predictions and speculation.  Howard Mintz of The San Jose Mercury Newslooks at some of the legal scenarios that may result when Court issues its opinions this month, concluding that “the outcome for same-sex couples in California is unlikely to be as simple or swift as a routine walk down the aisle.”  And USA Today’s Richard Wolf covers “the guessing game on the same-sex marriage cases,” reporting that the general consensus is that “[t]he justices will limit the expansion of gay marriage rights to California, with few if any implications for the rest of the country. Only on the Defense of Marriage Act, most agree, will the court strike a broad blow against discrimination by striking down the ban on federal benefits for married same-sex couples.”

Briefly:

• Adam Liptak of The New York Times examines the connection between the Court’s “embrace of gay rights” and the increasing number of openly gay clerks to both liberal and conservative Justices, noting that “[t]he atmosphere at the court today is far different from 1986, with a pace of change that may have surpassed that in the rest of society.”
• In an op-ed for Bloomberg View, Ilya Shapiro argues that the federal government has lost several cases – including three this Term – unanimously because it has “relied on outlandish legal theories that pushed a constitutional interpretation of extreme federal power.”
• At the Volokh Conspiracy, John Elwood reports on the government’s cert. reply brief in National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning, the case seeking review of the D.C. Circuit’s decision invalidating President Obama’s 2012 recess appointments to the NLRB. Lyle Denniston also covers the filing for this blog .
• At CNN, John Blake discusses what he sees as the “contradiction between the Clarence Thomas who was the angry campus radical in the 1960s and the conservative hero who sits on the Supreme Court today.”

Disclosures: Goldstein & Russell, P.C., whose attorneys work for or contribute to this blog in various capacities, represented the American Association of Law Schools as an amicus in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin. Kevin Russell of Goldstein & Russell was among the counsel on an amicus brief filed by former senators in support of Edith Windsor in United States v. Windsor.  Tejinder Singh was among the counsel on an amicus brief filed by international human rights advocates in support of the respondents Hollingsworth v. Perry.

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