Friday round-up
on May 1, 2015 at 7:25 am
On Wednesday, the Court heard oral arguments in Glossip v. Gross, the challenge to Oklahoma’s lethal injection protocol. I covered the oral argument for this blog in Plain English, with other coverage coming from David Savage of the Los Angeles Times. And Sean Murphy of the Associated Press (via AOL News) reports that the manufacturer of the drug at the heart of the case has asked Oklahoma to “return any supplies it may have obtained and not to use its products to execute prisoners.” Commentary comes from Eric Berger, who in an op-ed at CNN argues that the states’ secrecy about their lethal injection protocols “is crucial to the Eighth Amendment values at issue in the case.”
Before the oral arguments on Wednesday, the Court also issued its decision in Williams-Yulee v. The Florida Bar, in which five Justices upheld the state’s ban on personal solicitations of campaign funds by candidates for judicial office. Nina Totenberg covered the decision for NPR, while David Savage did the same for the Los Angeles Times. This blog continued its online symposium on the decision with posts from Floyd Abrams, Jessica Ring Amunson, Lawrence Baum, Joseph Grodin, and Matthew Streb. Other commentary comes from Rick Hasen, in an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times.
Coverage of Tuesday’s oral arguments in the challenges to state bans on same-sex marriage comes from David Savage in the Los Angeles Times and Steven Mazie in The Economist (subscription required), while commentary comes from Robert George at Public Discourse, Gene Schaerr at the Daily Signal, Andrew Koppelman and Ilya Somin in an op-ed for USA Today, with a response in a letter to the editor from David Boyle, Steven Mazie at Big Think, Michael Dorf at Dorf on Law, and Marci Hamilton at Hamilton and Griffin on Rights.
Briefly:
- At PrawfsBlawg, Carissa Hessick discusses Johnson v. United States, in which the Court recently heard reargument on whether the residual clause of the Armed Career Criminal Act is unconstitutionally vague.
- In another post at PrawfsBlawg, Hessick discusses “the linguistics of certiorari dismissal.”
- At the Civil Procedure and Federal Courts Blog, Adam Steinman discusses the proposed amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which the Court adopted on Wednesday.
- In another post at that blog, Steinman highlights “an interesting petition for certiorari out of the Seventh Circuit on summary judgment.”
- At ACSblog, Charlotte Garden discusses the petition for certiorari in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, suggesting that a cert. grant inthe case “will signal that at least four Justices believe that the Court is willing to. . . possibly even impose ‘right to work’ in the public sector.”
- At Real Clear Politics, David Keating urges the Court to grant cert. in O’Keefe v. Chisholm, a challenge to an investigation of conservative organizations that had supported reforms initiated by Wisconsin governor Scott Walker.
- In The New Republic, Brianne Gorod cites some of the Chief Justice’s recent comments and decisions as evidence that, “[i]n many important cases, progressives shouldn’t count him out.”
- At ACSblog, Justin Pidot looks back at the oral arguments in the Clean Air Act case Michigan v. EPA and is “left feeling pessimistic for EPA. While the outcome of the case is far from clear, my sense is that the power industry may continue to evade regulation for a while longer.”
A friendly reminder: We rely on our readers to send us links for the round-up. If you have or know of a recent (published in the last two or three days) article, post, or op-ed relating to the Court that you’d like us to consider for inclusion in the round-up, please send it to roundup [at] scotusblog.com.
