Friday round-up
On Wednesday afternoon, the court heard oral argument in Manuel v. City of Joliet, a case about whether a malicious prosecution suit can be brought under the Fourth Amendment; Rory Little analyzed the argument for this blog. Coverage of Wednesday’s argument in Buck v. Davis, a death penalty case involving racial bias and ineffective assistance of counsel, comes from Steven Mazie for The Economist, who notes that “none of the justices seemed comfortable sending Mr Buck to his death based on the racially tainted testimony that was ringing in the jurors’ ears as they entered the jury room,” and from Chris McDaniel and Chris Geidner at Buzzfeed, who report that although the court appeared poised to rule in Buck’s favor, the justices “spent much of the time during oral arguments discussing how far the ruling should go and what its impact would be on other cases.”
Briefly:
- In The National Law Journal (subscription or registration required), Tony Mauro reports that six “U.S. Supreme Court justices from across the ideological spectrum joined on Thursday to celebrate the renaming of George Mason University’s law school for their late colleague Antonin Scalia.”
- In The Washington Post, Kristine Guerra reports on the court’s denial of review last Monday of the murder conviction of an “abused and troubled California boy who, under police interrogation, confessed to killing his neo-Nazi father.”
- The Brennan Center for Justice discusses the denial of review in a Wisconsin campaign finance case involving the recall campaign of Gov. Scott Walker.
- In the Lincoln Journal Star, Lori Pilger reports that a Lincoln businessman “who sued Nebraska banking regulators for going after him after he publicly called President Barack Obama a communist is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to take up his case.”
- In The Huffington Post, Michael Meltsner discusses a recent book on the court’s death penalty jurisprudence, which charts “the massive dysfunction of the current system and the course that a future Supreme Court could take to do away with it” and “may shape the way the Justices view” capital punishment.
- In Mayer Brown’s Consumer Financial Services Review, David Beam and Jeremy McLaughlin highlight Expressions Hair Design v. Schneiderman, a case the court agreed last week to hear that involves a First Amendment challenge to a New York law that “prohibits most merchants from imposing a surcharge on customers who elect to pay with a credit card, but allow merchants to give discounts to consumers who pay with cash.”
- At the Sports Law Blog, Daniel Wallach reports that a New Jersey horse racing association has asked the court to review a lower court ruling “preventing New Jersey from partially repealing its state-law ban on sports gambling which had sought to decriminalize sports betting” “at the state’s casinos and racetracks.”
- On a sartorial note, Todd Ruger remarks in Roll Call that “Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wore a rainbow-colored collar on the bench during oral arguments Wednesday,” suggesting that “the reliably liberal Ginsburg” might be “sending a message about LGBT rights from the bench.”
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