Friday round-up
on Jun 30, 2017 at 7:14 am
Following Monday’s Supreme Court ruling largely lifting the injunctions against enforcement of the administration’s entry ban, the modified ban took effect last night. In The Washington Post, Carol Morello reports that “the administration took a particularly strict interpretation” of the court’s statement “that only those with ‘bona fide’ relationships, such as close family members, can enter the country.” At Take Care, Amir Ali argues that the “new guidelines for implementing the Supreme Court’s travel ban compromise” suggest that “the Administration is not going to make a good faith effort to effectuate the Court’s order.” Additional commentary on the guidelines comes from Adam Cox and Ryan Goodman at Just Security, Leah Litman at Take Care, and Marty Lederman at Just Security here and here. David Cole comments on the travel-ban case in a podcast for The Nation.
In The Economist, Steven Mazie looks back at the recently concluded Supreme Court term, calling it “a year of comity.” The Heritage Foundation’s SCOTUS 101 podcast features a discussion of this week’s rulings in the free-exercise and entry-ban cases and an assessment of Justice Neil Gorsuch’s first two months on the court. Another end-of-term wrap-up comes in a podcast for Constitution Daily. In the Los Angeles Times, David Savage focuses on Gorsuch’s debut, reporting that “[m]ost new justices are cautious upon arrival, but Gorsuch wasted no time in staking out a strong position to the right of his colleagues, including Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and his former boss and mentor, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy.” Commentary on Gorsuch comes from Paul Schiff Berman at The Hill.
Briefly:
- In a Constitution Daily podcast, Jeffrey Rosen interviews “’the dean of the Supreme Court press corps,’ the legendary journalist Lyle Denniston, who is retiring next month” after having covered the court since 1958.
- At NorthJersey.com, John Brennan reports that “New Jersey now appears to be a double-digit favorite against the NFL and four other national sports organizations in the long-running sports betting case” the court will consider next term.
- At The Washington Legal Foundation’s Legal Pulse blog, Richard Samp discusses Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Court of California, in which the justices reversed a state court finding of specific personal jurisdiction over out-of-state plaintiffs in a multistate lawsuit, concluding that the “Court has left very little wiggle room for lawyers intent on engaging in forum shopping in distant but friendly courtrooms.”
- At ACS Blog, Brandon Garrett weighs in on the court’s ruling last week in McWilliams v. Dunn, which found that Alabama had denied a death-penalty defendant the expert mental-health assistance to which he was entitled, hoping it is “just the beginning of a national effort to make sure that no one is convicted without a fair chance to present the science.”
- At The National Conference of State Legislatures blog, Lisa Soronen notes that in Hernandez v. Mesa, the court on Monday “clarified that the facts learned after an incident are not relevant to granting or denying qualified immunity.”
- At Lock Law Blog, Ryan Lockman looks at Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia v. Comer, in which the court ruled this week that a state ban on grant funding for a church playground violated the First Amendment; he discusses “the majority opinion’s attempt – perhaps a futile one – to blunt the extent of its holding via … a ‘limiting provision,’” looks at other recent cases employing the same tactic, and concludes that it will not be surprising “if a few years down the line, the Chief Justice sheds that footnote and uses this case to find for religious institutions in cases down the road.”
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