Monday round-up

This morning the Supreme Court will hear the first oral arguments of 2020 in two cases. First up is Lucky Brand Dungarees v. Marcel Fashions Group, which asks whether, when a plaintiff asserts new claims, a defendant can raise defenses that were not actually litigated and resolved in any prior cases between the parties. Megan La Belle previewed the case for this blog. Philip Duggan and Robert Reese Oate have a preview at Cornell Law Schools Legal Information Institute.

Todays second case is Thole v. U.S. Bank, in which the justices will consider whether a participant in a defined-benefit pension fund that meets minimum-funding criteria can sue the fund managers when he has not actually suffered any financial injury. This blogs preview came from Dana Muir. Basem Besada and Brandon Slotkin previewed the case for Cornell.

At the ABA Journal, Mark Walsh previews one of tomorrows cases, Kelly v. United States, which stems from the Bridgegate controversy in New Jersey and involves the extent to which federal fraud statutes cover the politically motivated acts of public officials. At USA Today, Richard Wolf reports that recently, the high court has[often] admonished prosecutorsfor stretching laws to win convictions: On Tuesday, [it] will shed some light on whether itsforgiveness extends to shutting down accesslanes to theGeorge Washington Bridgethe busiest bridge in the world for political retribution. Additional coverage comes from David Porter at AP and Ephrat Livni at Quartz.

On Friday, the justices added three cases to their merits docket for the term. Amy Howe covers the grants for this blog, in a post that first appeared at Howe on the Court. At Bloomberg Law, Jon Reid and Sara Merken report that the court agreed to review a ruling that a federal robocall law exemption letting companies collect government-backed debt is unconstitutional.

Briefly:

• At The Dispatch, Sarah Isgur considers whom the president might nominate to the Supreme Court before the next election if Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 86 years old, or Justice Stephen Breyer, 81 years old, were to leave the court unexpectedly.
• At the Reproductive Rights Law Prof Blog, Cynthia Soohoo explains why the court should decline last weeks invitation in an amicus brief signed by over 200 federal lawmakers to overrule its 1973 caseRoe v. Wade,which recognized womans fundamental right to access abortion.
• At Jost on Justice, Kenneth Jost looks at two pending petitions in which [f]aithless electors from two states, Colorado and Washington, are hoping the Court will rule that states have no power to penalize them for voting contrary to their pledges to vote according to the popular vote in their states.

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