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Monday round-up

The Court’s announcement last week that it had noted jurisdiction and would hear oral argument in Evenwel v. Abbott, the Texas “one person, one vote” case, continues to garner commentary.  At the blog of the National Conference of State Legislatures, Lisa Soronen observes that the Court’s “agreeing to hear this case ranks as a surprised” because, “[o] ver the last 25 years the Supreme Court has denied certiorari in at least three other petitions (all involving local governments) arguing that voter population must be equalized in districts.”  Derek Muller weighs in at Library of Law and Liberty, arguing that the case “threatens . . . to impose a standard that is squarely at odds with the structural design of the Constitution: representative government includes representation of all persons, not simply voters.”  And at his Election Law Blog, Rick Hasen suggests that “there’s a pretty good chance” that the Court could, before the end of this Term, take on yet “another blockbuster elections case.” 

Other commentary focuses on the Court’s anticipated decision in King v. Burwell, the challenge to the availability of subsidies under the Affordable Care Act for individuals who purchase their health insurance on an exchange established by the federal government.  At Balkinization, Simon Lazarus discusses a recent article in The New York Times that, he contends, “dispatch[es] ACA opponents’ effort to square the legislative record of Congress’ intent and purpose with the a-contextual interpretation they conjure to make the ACA mean the opposite of what everyone involved in its enactment understood and intended.”  And in The Atlantic, Eric Segall argues that the case is “a political challenge to the ACA dressed up in legal garb.”

Briefly:

  • In a podcast for Slate, Dahlia Lithwick discusses some of the major decisions still pending at the Court with this blog’s Tom Goldstein.
  • At PrawfsBlawg, Richard Re discusses last week’s decision in Wellness International Network v. Sharif, “explor[ing] a pragmatic question that’s central to the Court’s jurisprudence: is the federal judiciary threatened to the extent that Congress can outsource the federal judicial power to non-Article III judges?” “The answer,” he concludes, “is surprisingly unclear.”
  • At Jost on Justice, Kenneth Jost contends that, although the “Roberts Court conservatives wax genuinely rhapsodic about the constitutional rights of well-funded candidates and political groups,” “they are apparently less enamored of the political speech activities of opponents of capital punishment.”
  • At the Constitutional Accountability Center’s Text and History Blog, Akhil Amar and Doug Kendall discuss – among other things – President Abraham Lincoln’s “life in Illinois and the constitutional vision he developed as a lawyer in the Territories” and “Justice Anthony Kennedy’s upbringing in California and its influence on what he may be thinking in the pending” challenges to state bans on same-sex marriage.
  • In an op-ed for The Washington Post, John Kerr urges the Court to grant review in the property rights case Central Radio Co. v. City of Norfolk, describing the case as “one that offers the Supreme Court an opening to defend some of our nation’s most cherished founding principles.”
  • At Forbes, Nick Sibilla marks “the 50th Anniversary of Lamont v. Postmaster General, the first time the U.S. Supreme Court ever ruled that an act of Congress violated the First Amendment.”

Recommended Citation: Amy Howe, Monday round-up, SCOTUSblog (Jun. 1, 2015, 6:57 AM), https://www.scotusblog.com/2015/06/monday-round-up-260/