Tuesday round-up

AMY HOWE MAR 29, 2016 3:51 AM

Today the Court will hear oral arguments in two cases:  the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act case Sheriff v. Gillie and the prisoner exhaustion case Ross v. Blake.  Ronald Mann previewed Sheriff for this blog, with other coverage from law students Brandon Annette and Christopher Saki for Cornell’s Legal Information Institute.  Steve Vladeck previewed Ross for this blog, with law students Mark Denton and Jessica Kim covering it for Cornell.

Yesterday the Court added one new case to its merits docket for next Term and called for the views of the Solicitor General in one more.  Lyle Denniston covered the order list for this blog; in The National Law Review, Eilene Spear discusses the denial of review in a Clean Air Act case.  In the Chicago Tribune, Jason Meisner reports on the denial of review in the case of former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich.   

Coverage relating to the nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to succeed Justice Antonin Scalia, as well as the politics of the nomination, comes from NPR’s Nina Totenberg, Nolan McCaskill and Seung Min Kim at Politico, and Burgess Everett, also at Politico.  Commentary comes from The Monkey Cage, which looks at what might happen in closely divided cases; Roland Nikles at News, Reviews, and Views; and Dara Lind, who at Vox laments the dearth of criminal defense lawyers on the Court.

Briefly:

• In The New York Times, Natasha Singer reports on Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, “video game impresario.”
• In Supreme Court Brief (subscription or registration required), Tony Mauro reports that the “U.S. Supreme Court Style Manual, viewed by the justices as an internal document for helping law clerks and justices draft opinions in proper form, is going public for the first time, without the court’s approval.”
• In Coverage Opinions, Randy Maniloff interviews Carter Phillips, who has argued before the Court more than any other attorney in private practice.
• At Empirical SCOTUS, Adam Feldman observes that, in the wake of the death of Justice Antonin Scalia last month, “Justice Sotomayor has become one of the most dominant voices” at oral arguments.
• At Slate, Meaghan Winter discusses the Court, abortion, and the “undue burden” standard.
• In The New Yorker, Richard Socarides looks at the “gay-rights backlash” after last year’s decision holding that states cannot prohibit same-sex marriage.
• At casetext, Josh Lee looks back at the Court’s recent decision throwing out the conviction of a Louisiana inmate and concludes that, although as a “defense lawyer and opponent of the death penalty, [he] might be expected to cheer the Court’s decision,” “it’s hard to celebrate when, rather than really cleaning up the mess, the Court occasionally deigns to remove a few pieces of rubble from a constitutional disaster area.”

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.

 [Disclosure: Goldstein & Russell, P.C., is among the counsel on an amicus brief in support of the respondents in Zubik.  However, I am not affiliated with the firm.]

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