Monday round-up
on Nov 5, 2012 at 8:58 am
Briefly:
- Writing for the Huffington Post, Radley Balko laments what he describes as the dearth of criminal defense experience among the Justices and asserts – in the context of last week’s oral arguments in the dog-sniff cases, Florida v. Jardines and Florida v. Harris – that the lack of experience “has a profound effect on the context in which the Court attempts to maintain the delicate balance between liberty and security.”
- In an op-ed for Salon, David Sirota argues that if Mitt Romney wins the election, Democrats can prevent an “automatic judicial disaster” by opposing his “presumably ultraconservative nominees” for the Court.
- Jonathan Stempel of Reuters reports that Goldman Sachs has filed a cert. petition asking the Court to throw out a mortgage securities class action lawsuit that the company claims could cost Wall Street tens of billions of dollars.
- Alison Frankel of Reuters previews this morning’s arguments in Comcast v. Behrend, in which the Justices will consider whether a district court may certify a class action without resolving whether the plaintiff class has introduced admissible evidence to show that the case is susceptible to awarding damages on a class-wide basis.
- Slate‘s Dahlia Lithwick reviews The Partisan, a new biography of former Chief Justice William Rehnquist written by John Jenkins.
- At PrawfsBlawg, Shima Baradaran looks back at last week’s arguments in Bailey v. United States and concludes that the Court is looking for a rule that would give clear guidance to officers on when they can and cannot detain individuals while executing a warrant.
- At Walshslaw, Kevin Walsh discusses a novel jurisdictional argument about the Class Action Fairness Act raised by an amicus brief in Standard Fire v. Knowles, but ultimately concludes that the argument is unpersuasive. (Thanks to Howard Bashman for the link.)
- Ethan Bronner of The New York Times reports on the tension in the Asian-American community over the issue of affirmative action in the context of Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin.
- At this blog, Steve Vladeck previews Tuesday’s arguments in Evans v. Michigan, while Kevin Johnson reports on last week’s arguments in Chaidez v. United States. Lyle considers the likelihood that Justice Elena Kagan will recuse herself if the Court grants cert. in one of the cases challenging the Defense of Marriage Act, while Amanda Frost examines the legal scholarship on Padilla v. Kentucky.
