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Friday round-up

Coverage of and commentary on Wednesday’s oral arguments in the Kansas death penalty cases continues.  Nina Totenberg reports on the cases for NPR, noting that, although “the justices seemed to be in some agreement on the technical questions before the court, the issue of the death penalty clearly remains an open sore, with Justice Scalia, at one point, pointedly disdaining Justice Stephen Breyer’s views on the subject.”  And at Slate, Mark Joseph Stern suggests that the arguments finished “with no clear answers and a lot of barely muffled irritation among the justices.” 

Briefly:

  • At the Blog of Legal Times (subscription or registration required), Tony Mauro reports that a “bipartisan group of members of Congress on Thursday introduced the latest bill aimed at requiring the U.S. Supreme Court and other federal appeals courts to allow broadcast and video coverage of their proceedings.”
  • At the Fed Soc Blog, Richard Pildes previews Puerto Rico v. Sanchez Valle, in which the Court granted review last week, describing the issues in the case as “historically and legally fascinating, but also the most politically explosive and divisive issues in Puerto Rico:  they go to the existential question of what Puerto Rico is and what its current and future relationship to the United States is and is likely to be.”
  • At the Wisconsin Appellate Law Blog, Eric Pearson discusses the Court’s summary reversal in Maryland v. Kulbicki, in which the Justices “upbraided the Maryland Court of Appeals for ‘apparently conducting its own Internet research nearly two decades after the trial,’” characterizing the decision as “further evidence that the Supreme Court is aware of the issue and that, in the not-too-distant future, it might decide to weigh in.”

 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.

 

Recommended Citation: Amy Howe, Friday round-up, SCOTUSblog (Oct. 9, 2015, 7:39 AM), https://www.scotusblog.com/2015/10/friday-round-up-291/