Monday round-up

AMY HOWE MAR 7, 2016 6:46 AM

Wednesday’s oral arguments in the challenge to Texas’s abortion regulations continue to draw coverage and commentary.  In the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Blythe Bernhard reports on the effect that the Court’s ruling could have on similar regulations in Missouri.  Commentary comes from Dana Milbank in The Washington Post and Scott Lemieux in The Guardian.

Writing for this blog, Lyle Denniston reports that on Friday the Court “blocked the continued enforcement of a Louisiana law that required doctors who perform abortions to have a professional right to send patients to a hospital within thirty miles of their clinics.”  Other coverage comes from Robert Barnes of The Washington Post and Adam Liptak of The New York Times.

It has been over three weeks since the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, but the battle over his successor also continues to generate coverage and commentary.  Reports regarding possible nominees come from Debra Cassens Weiss in the ABA Journal, Julie Hirschfeld Davis and David Herszenhorn in The New York Times, with another story from Davis on Saturday,

Writing for this blog, Senator Patrick Leahy urges Senate Republicans to hold hearings for the eventual nominee, while Vice President Joe Biden weighs in for The New York Times.  Other commentary comes from Leah Libresco at FiveThirtyEight, Bidish Sarma and Michael Vasquez for The Huffington Post. And at Brookings, John Hudak and Molly Reynolds analyze why, in their view, accusations that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell “blundered his handling of Scalia’s death and the subsequent strategy to block any presidential nomination—are foolish.”

Briefly:

• At Fed Soc Blog, John Yoo weighs in on Justice Clarence Thomas’s general practice (from which he recently departed) of not asking questions from the bench, arguing that “[j]ust because Justice Thomas doesn’t ask many questions from the bench has nothing to do with his engagement with the cases or the power of his opinions.”
• In The National Law Journal (subscription or registration required), Tony Mauro reports that the Court “has put off the arguments in a closely watched Microsoft Corp. class action until next term, in a scheduling move that may be related to the Feb. 13 death of Justice Antonin Scalia.”
• And at The Blog of Legal Times , Mauro reports that last week the Justices “turned down a request from news media and transparency organizations for the same-day release of the audio of oral arguments in” the abortion and immigration cases.
• At his eponymous blog , John Q. Barrett reports that President Dwight D. Eisenhower did not “snub” the funeral of Justice Robert Jackson, but instead “did not attend because he was out of town.”
• And at PlanetGreen.org, Katrianna Brisack discusses her personal experience with last Term’s Michigan v. EPA.

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