Thursday round-up
on Dec 10, 2015 at 10:29 am
Yesterday’s oral arguments in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, the challenge to the university’s consideration of race in its undergraduate admissions process, continue to garner coverage and commentary. Molly Runkle rounded up early coverage and commentary for this blog yesterday, I covered the arguments in Plain English for my own blog, and Mark Walsh provided this blog with a “view” from the Courtroom. Other coverage comes from NPR’s Nina Totenberg, Michael Lindeberger for The Dallas Morning News, and Greg Stohr for Bloomberg Politics (with another story focusing on Justice Antonin Scalia’s comments). Commentary on yesterday’s argument comes from Ruthann Robson at the Constitutional Law Prof Blog, Jonathan Keim at the National Review’s Bench Memos, and David Gans at the New Republic.
Coverage of and commentary on Tuesday’s oral arguments in Evenwel v. Abbott, the “one person, one vote” challenge to Texas’s state legislative maps, also continue. Howard Fischer of Capitol Media Services (via the Tucson Times) reports that the case “has Hispanic congressmen worried it could lead to giving the majority Anglo population a new tool to maintain political control despite changing demographics.” Commentary comes from Cristian Farias at Huffington Post, Carrie Severino at Bench Memos, and Ilya Shapiro for USA Today and Cato at Liberty.
Briefly:
- In The New York Times, Linda Greenhouse suggests that the denial of review in a challenge to one city’s assault weapons ban (and Justice Clarence Thomas’s dissent from that denial, which was joined by Justice Antonin Scalia) “does underscore something important about the court’s current dynamic: the chasm on the conservative flank between, on the one hand, two justices who embrace all-out judicial activism and, on the other, those who are willing to wait and see.”
- In The National Law Journal (subscription or registration required), Marcia Coyle talks to Justice John Paul Stevens “about the new PBS documentary on the 1969 investigation into the Illinois Supreme Court– a case that he said set him on the path to the U.S. Supreme Court.”
- At PrawfsBlawg, Howard Wasserman weighs in on comments by Justice Scalia (and criticism thereof) on the Court’s opinion striking down state bans on same-sex marriage.
- In The National Law Journal (subscription or registration required), Tony Mauro reports that, “[a]lmost a full year after Nebraska and Oklahoma sued Colorado over its legalization of marijuana, the litigation is languishing on the U.S. Supreme Court’s docket as it awaits the views of the Obama administration.”
- In the Supreme Court Brief (subscription required), Mauro reports that the Court “took note of a rare occurrence on Monday: a confession of error by the solicitor general.”
