Thursday round-up

AMY HOWE JAN 9, 2014 11:25 AM

With the Justices scheduled to meet for a private Conference tomorrow – the first in nearly a month – much of the coverage of the Court focuses on (and encourages the Court to grant) cases that they will consider tomorrow.  In an op-ed for The Washington Examiner, Gary Shapiro argues that the Court “should weigh in, and rule in favor of Limelight and innovation,” in the patent case Limelight Networks v. Akamai Technologies.  “Ruling against Limelight,” he contends, “will create a dangerous new legal doctrine that threatens the whole industry.”  In the National Review Online, Tiger Joyce urges the Court to review two class-certification cases, Whirlpool Corp. v. Glazer and Sears, Roebuck and Company v. Butler, on the merits, arguing that if the decisions below are permitted to stand,  “not only will class-action lawyers stand to make out like bandits, but consumers would pay the price as huge new litigation costs are passed on to them.”  And at IP Watchdog, Gene Quinn discusses patent trolls and Soverain Software LLC v. Newegg, a case involving the patent doctrine of obviousness, and urges the Court to grant cert. tomorrow because the “case is not your ordinary obviousness dispute.”  

Coverage of Monday’s order putting same-sex marriages on hold in Utah also continues.  Writing for The Economist’s Democracy in America blog, Steven Mazie suggests that “[t]his week’s drama over the Utah ruling gives an early indication that, in the justices’ eyes, the time is not quite right to sweep away all state bans on same-sex marriage.”  And at BuzzFeed, Chris Geidner discusses the status of the same-sex couples who married in Utah between the district judge’s December 20 order striking down the state’s ban and Monday’s order by the Court.

Briefly:

• At Talking Points Memo, Sahil Kapur discusses next week’s oral argument in National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning, the challenge to the president’s recess appointments to the NLRB, and the effect that recent filibuster reform has had on the case’s significance.  He observes that, although filibuster reform may have made the case “suddenly be less consequential in the near-term,” “the outcome of the case may be deeply consequential next year — and onwards — if Republicans win back the Senate majority.”
• At Summary Judgments, a blog run by Loyola Law School (Los Angeles), Ben Adlin looks at the evolution of oral arguments at the Court.
• At Dorf on Law, Michael Dorf responds to a recent essay by Senator Ted Cruz on Bond v. United States and the treaty power.  Dorf criticizes the essay for failing to take on what he regards as as “the fundamental problem: Cruz talks at length about the concerns of Madison and Jefferson but does not say a single word about the ways in which the world–and international law–have changed since the Founding.”

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