Pope Francis’s visit to the United States once again dominates Court-related news. In the Legal Times (subscription or registration required), Tony Mauro reports that the pope “made an unscheduled visit Wednesday night to the Little Sisters of the Poor with the aim of showing support for the group’s battle against the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive mandate before the U.S. Supreme Court.” And Amy Sullivan of Yahoo! News discusses the absence of three of the Court’s Catholic Justices – Antonin Scalia, Samuel Alito, and Clarence Thomas – from the pope’s address to Congress yesterday.
At The Huffington Post, Cristian Farias discusses a recent speech by Justice Antonin Scalia at Rhodes College, suggesting that the speech “seemed to signal that his dismay over gay marriage continues.” And Bloomberg BNA’s Kimberly Robinson talks to Roberta Kaplan, who represented Edie Windsor in her “historic U.S. Supreme Court win” striking “down the federal Defense of Marriage Act.”
The death penalty also factors into Court-related news and commentary today. At Talking Points Memo, Caitlin Macneal reports on other recent remarks by Justice Scalia, who indicated that “he ‘wouldn’t be surprised’ if the court rules that it is unconstitutional” and “added that he believes that the Constitution allows for the death penalty as long as there is a fair trial.” And in The National Law Journal (subscription or registration required), Charles Ogletree and David Harris urge the Court to grant review in a case involving whether “a juror’s racial bias violated the rights to an impartial jury and a fair trial of a man sentenced to death in Georgia.”
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