Wednesday round-up

EDITH ROBERTS NOV 14, 2018 6:45 AM

Yesterday the court released orders from last week’s conference, adding two cases to its merits docket. Amy Howe covers the order list for this blog, in a post that first appeared at Howe on the Court. For The Washington Post, Gregory Schneider and Robert Barnes report that in Virginia House of Delegates v. Bethune-Hill, “[t]he U.S. Supreme Court will take up the issue of redistricting in Virginia, agreeing to hear an appeal filed by Republican legislators after a lower court’s ruling that 11 House of Delegates districts must be redrawn to correct racial gerrymandering.” In a guest post at the Election Law Blog, Michael Parsons suggests that “[t]he conservative wing of the Court may see this case as a good vehicle to emphasize just how reticent courts should be to step in and police these boundaries generally.” At ThinkProgress, Ian Millhiser writes that “[i]n a sensible world, Bethune-Hill would have nothing whatsoever to do with the Affordable Care Act,” but that the case “also presents a difficult issue regarding when non-parties to a federal lawsuit may appeal lower court decisions to a higher authority,” [a]nd this technical question could have tremendous implications for Obamacare.”

Briefly:

• The Harvard Law Review releases its annual Supreme Court issue, focusing on October Term 2017.
• At Bloomberg, Greg Stohr reports that “[i]n the five weeks since Brett Kavanaugh became the newest justice after a divisive confirmation fight, the court’s members are going out of their way to offer public displays of collegiality during arguments,” noting that “[h]ow long the feel-good era lasts may depend on how contentious the court’s docket becomes.”
• Sean Fine reports for the Toronto Globe and Mail that, during a public discussion with a justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, Justice Elena Kagan told the audience that “[t]he partisan process for judicial nomination hearings in the United States is harmful to the Supreme Court.”

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