Friday round-up

This week the Acting Solicitor General filed a brief on behalf of the Tennessee Valley Authority in American Electric Power Co. v. Connecticut, urging the Court to vacate a Second Circuit ruling that would permit lawsuits against greenhouse gas emitters for their contributions to climate change.   The New York Times covered the filing (via Gabriel Nelson of Greenwire), as does the San Francisco Chronicles Bob Egelko, the Washington Posts Steven Mufson, and Stephen Power of the Wall Street Journals Washington Wire.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor spoke yesterday at the University of Denver.  The Justice discussed her path to the Court and last Terms decision in Berghuis v. Thompkins, a Miranda-rights case in which she filed a dissenting opinion.  However, Sotomayor declined to weigh in on several hot-button issues, including the recent release of classified documents by the website WikiLeaks, explaining that the case presented a question that is very likely to come before the Court.  The Huffington Post, the Denver Post, and the Associated Press all cover Sotomayors remarks.

Briefly:

• At his eponymous blog, Josh Blackman discusses a recent essay by Richard Albert (covered in Wednesday‘s round-up) regarding the importance of looking to those who inspired and drafted the Fourteenth Amendment, and he links Alberts argument to a similar argument that Blackman himself has made in the context of the Second Amendment
• The WSJ Law Blogs Nathan Koppel reports on the decline in the use of the honest services fraud law to prosecute white-collar crime following the Courts decision limiting the laws scope earlier this summer.
• JURIST and the AmLaw Daily both report on Wal-Marts cert. petition in its gender-discrimination case, which Lyle covered on Wednesday for this blog.
• Finally, at the Opinionator blog of the New York Times, Linda Greenhouse examines McCreary County v. ACLU, a challenge to the posting of the Ten Commandments on a courthouse wall.  In 2005, the Supreme Court upheld a preliminary injunction ordering the removal of the display, but the case may now return to the Court.