Wednesday round-up

Commentators have ideas about how the court should handle the cases on this term’s docket that have not yet been argued. At The Dispatch, Ryan Black and others write that although “COVID-19 [will] change our way of life—and our political and legal institutions,” “one thing the virus should not change is the U.S. Supreme Court’s use of oral argument to decide cases,” because “oral argument serves critical roles.” In an op-ed for The Washington Post (subscription required), Ashwin Phatak urges the court not to delay resolution of three cases involving efforts to obtain President Donald Trump’s financial records “beyond the end of its term in June,” outlining several possibilities for “resolv[ing] these cases in a timely manner.” At Lawfare (via How Appealing), law students Richard Altieri and Hayley Evans note that “[u]nlike prior courts that dealt with outbreaks, today’s court has a potential solution: teleconferencing.”

Briefly:

• At this blog, Amy Howe kicks off “a month-long series that looks at exactly how hard it is for the general public to attend oral argument.”
• At Quartz, Ephrat Livni looks at a recent letter to the court in Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California, a challenge to the government’s decision to terminate the DACA program, which allowed immigrants brought to this country illegally as children to apply for protection from deportation, highlighting the role of many DACA recipients on the front lines of the fight against COVID-19.

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