Tuesday round-up

Last night, the Obama Administration filed a brief in which it asked the Court to deny Virginias petition for certiorari before judgment in that states challenge to health-care litigation.  The Associated Press has coverage, as does Lyle Denniston of this blog, who notes that the case will likely be scheduled for the Justices initial consideration late this month or in April.

Other coverage of the Court centers upon upcoming cases. At the Michigan View, Jeffrey Hadden previews next weeks oral argument in Davis v. United States and asks whether criminal law is a rigged game in which a crazed proceduralism is given more weight than the actual purpose of a criminal trial, which is to discover the truth about who committed a crime.  And Patently-O discusses the briefs filed in Microsoft v. i4i Limited Partnership (scheduled for oral argument in April), in which the Court will consider whether clear and convincing evidence is needed to show patent invalidity.

And finally, the debate over whether Justices should be subject to the same code of conduct as other federal judges continues. Ed Whelan of the National Review Online argues that a Washington Post op-ed (to which James linked yesterday) in favor of such a code takes cheap whacks at Justices Scalia and Thomas, and that vague standards and undefined or ill-defined terms would not provide clear guidance as to impermissible actions.

Briefly:

• Garrett Epps considers the Roberts Court and its First Amendment jurisprudence in an essay at The Atlantic, observing that like one of Richard Dawkins’s powerful memes, protection for vile speech has jumped from the Warren to the Burger to the Rehnquist Courts, and now has found a home in the brain of John Roberts himself.
• With the redistricting process drawing nearer, Kenneth Jost of Jost on Justice argues that although the Court struck a major struck a major blow for political democracy a half century ago by establishing the one person, one vote rule for electoral districts in Baker v. Carr, more recently it has failed to finish the job by leaving the time-dishonored practice of partisan gerrymandering effectively immune to judicial oversight.
• On C-SPAN, Erwin Chemerinsky discusses his book, The Conservative Assault on the Constitution, as well as judicial activism in light of Citizens United and Heller.