Tuesday round-up

By Nabiha Syed
on Nov 23, 2010 at 9:46 am

After a week-long recess, the Justices are scheduled to meet today to consider pending petitions.  One such petition, reports Joan Biskupic of USA Today, is the petition in Wal-Mart v. Dukes, in which the retail giant has asked the Court to review the lower courts’ decision allowing female Wal-Mart employees to bring their gender-discrimination claims as a class action. Central Valley Law Blog speculates that other class-action cases may come to a “grinding halt” if the Court grants cert. in Wal-Mart. Other “Petitions to watch” are available here.

Other coverage examines broader trends in the Court’s caseload and jurisprudence. At Concurring Opinions, Alan Chen considers whether the Roberts Court has a “First Amendment agenda,” in light of its decisions to grant cert. in United States v. Stevens, Snyder v. Phelps, and Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Association. And Ken Lammers of CrimLaw criticizes the Court’s frequent use of multi-part tests.

Briefly:

• Orin Kerr of the Volokh Conspiracy discusses a recently filed petition for certiorari in Pineda-Moreno v. United States, in which a defendant seeks review of a Ninth Circuit decision upholding the use of GPS surveillance without a warrant.  Lyle Denniston also discussed the petition at length yesterday for this blog.  And Michelle Olsen of Appellate Daily analyzes the circuit split regarding GPS surveillance technology.
• Six months after the Court’s decision in Graham v. Florida, holding that Florida’s practice of sentencing juvenile offenders to life in prison without parole for non-homicide crimes was unconstitutional, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune examines the sentencing of juveniles in that state and concludes that “Florida courts in several high-profile cases are re-sentencing the juveniles to terms that still amount to life sentences.”