Tuesday round-up

By Amy Howe
on Apr 26, 2016 at 5:49 am

This morning the Court will hear oral arguments in two cases.  In his preview for this blog, Evan Lee describes Mathis v. United States as a case that is “likely to be the Term’s most important federal sentencing case, and its second-most important immigration case after United States v. Texas.”  Law students Kelsey MacElroy and Katie Marren have a preview for Cornell’s Legal Information Institute.  Rory Little has our preview of Dietz v. Bouldin, in which the Court will consider whether, after a judge has discharged a jury from service in a case and the jurors have left the judge’s presence, the judge may recall the jurors for further service in the same case; law students Brandon Annette and Christopher Saki do the same for Cornell.

Tomorrow the Court will hear the challenge by former Virginia governor Robert McDonnell to his fraud conviction.  In The Washington Post, Robert Barnes reports on the case of former Alabama governor Don Siegelman, describing “the longtime Alabama officeholder” as “the cause celebre . . . for those who believe vague federal corruption laws give politically ambitious prosecutors too much leeway in deciding what and whom to investigate.”  And in an op-ed for the same paper, Randall Eliason argues that McDonnell’s conviction should stand, because it is “a relatively straightforward example of public corruption.”

Commentary relating to the nomination of Chief Judge Merrick Garland to succeed the late Justice Antonin Scalia comes from Juan Williams, who in The Hill predicts that Republican opposition to the nomination could backfire; Beth Salamon, who in the Courier-Journal argues that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his colleagues “should do their job, fix their legacy on judicial appointments, and move quickly to give President Obama’s many judicial nominees, including Judge Garland, a fair and timely hearing and vote”; and retired Judge Nathaniel Jones, who in The Vindicator expresses regret that “Ohio Sen. Rob Portman joined with Majority Leader McConnell when he announced that filling the seat of the late Justice Scalia should await the election of the next president.”

Briefly:

• At Hamilton and Griffin on Rights, Joan Krause has the second part of her analysis of the False Claims Act case Universal Health Services v. United States ex rel. Escobar; she focuses on an issue that she describes as “largely overlooked by most commentators: the potential for differing interpretations of what is required by the underlying Medicare and Medicaid provisions that form the basis for the certification.”
• At Think Progress, Ian Millhiser urges the Court to grant review in the case of Texas death-row inmate Duane Buck, which he characterizes as “a tale of racism compounded by double standards, poor legal representation, and a system that often says that it is more important to have certainty in death sentencing than it is for courts to reach the proper result.”

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