Thursday round-up [UPDATED]
on Sep 12, 2013 at 8:21 am
At Forbes, Rich Samp discusses the pending cert. petition in Republic of Argentina v. NML Capital Ltd., in which Argentina has asked the Court to review whether the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act prohibits federal courts from entering injunctions against foreign nations with respect to payments on their sovereign indebtedness. Samp (who filed an amicus brief in support of the bondholders opposing Argentina in the Second Circuit) concludes that “Argentina faces a daunting task in convincing four Supreme Court justices to vote to grant” the petition, and adds that its “task is made even more difficult by the possibility that Justice Sotomayor may recuse herself, thereby reducing the pool of justices from which it needs to find four votes.”
With two cert. petitions involving challenges to the warrantless search of an arrestee’s cell phone now pending at the Court, Richard Wolf of USA Today takes a broader look at the Court’s efforts to grapple with issues of privacy and technology.
At Cato at Liberty, Ilya Shapiro discusses Minnesota Majority v. Mansky, a challenge to a Minnesota law that bans political materials at polling sites; Cato and the Rutherford Institute filed an amicus brief in support of the challengers in the case.
The UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples has weighed in in the custody dispute over Baby Veronica, the child at the heart of last Term’s Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl. James Anaya emphasized that “Veronica’s human rights as a child and as member of the Cherokee Nation, an indigenous people, should be fully and adequately considered in the ongoing judicial and administrative proceedings that will determine her future upbringing.”
With the Court still in a formal recess until the first Monday in October, Carolyn Shapiro of ISCOTUS looks at what the Justices and their clerks are doing now.
Note: This post has been updated to clarify that Rich Samp’s Forbes post refers to No. 12-1494, Republic of Argentina v. NML Group, rather than a different case bearing the same caption.
[Disclosure: Kevin Russell of Goldstein & Russell, P.C., whose attorneys contribute to this blog in various capacities, is among the counsel to the petitioner in Riley v. California, one of the cellphone privacy cases discussed in Richard Wolf’s story in USA Today. However, the author of this post is not affiliated with the firm.]
