Monday round-up
Today the Justices return to the bench for the February sitting. This morning at 10 a.m. they will hear arguments in the consolidated cases collectively known as the greenhouse gas cases, challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate the emissions of such gases from stationary sources. The greenhouse gas cases were the subject of a recent symposium on this blog, and Lyle Denniston previewed the cases over the weekend for us. Other coverage comes from Robert Barnes in The Washington Post, with commentary coming from former EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman in Politico.
Other coverage of the Court focuses on Jeffrey Toobin’s criticism in The New Yorker of Justice Clarence Thomas’s silence at oral argument. Rick Hasen responds to that criticism at his Election Law Blog, describing himself as “truly puzzled” by the post, while Michael McGough does the same in an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times.
In the wake of a recent decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit striking down a California law that restricts permits to carry handguns, Michael Kirkland of UPI looks at the prospect that the Court will weigh in; at Wall Street Cheat Sheet, Meghan Foley discusses comments by retired Justice John Paul Stevens on the Court’s Second Amendment jurisprudence.
Briefly:
- In an op-ed for The Washington Post, Richard Hasen looks ahead to the anticipated decision in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, the challenge to the aggregate limits on individual contributions to political parties and candidates for federal office. He predicts that, although the Court’s decision could “clear the way for more corruption,” it also “could have a surprising positive side effect: reducing gridlock in Washington.”
- At Jost on Justice, Ken Jost discusses a recent decision by the Massachusetts Supreme Court that relied on the state constitution to hold that police must get a search warrant to obtain cellphone call records from a service provider. He observes that “[p]rivacy advocates can hope that the Massachusetts ruling helps prompt the justices to re-interpret past decisions to catch up with the realities of privacy-invasive 21st century technology.”
- At Public Citizen’s Consumer Law and Policy Blog, Paul Alan Levy weighs in on the policy that restricts public comments by moot court judges in the Georgetown University Law Center’s Supreme Court Institute moot court program on cases in which they participate. [Disclosure: This blog’s policy does not permit anyone to report on any case in which he has played a role, including as a moot court judge.]
- In The Daily Beast, Stuart Taylor, Jr., looks at Justice Anthony Kennedy’s role on the Court, describing him as “far more than the ‘swing vote’ on many enormously important and controversial issues that he is reputed to be.”
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