Federal Judiciary

Monday round-up

By James Bickford

Court watchers continue to be preoccupied with the challenges to the recent health-care law.  Michael Kirkland of United Press International reports on Virginia?s attempt to seek certiorari before an appellate court rules on the case, and on Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg?s recent comments that such an effort is unlikely to succeed.  (Julie Moos of Politics Daily provides several excerpts from the appearance at which Justice Ginsburg made those comments.)  The editorial board of the Washington Post warns that ?[r]ushed cases make bad law,? instead endorsing a plan to accelerate the schedule of briefing and argument before the courts of appeals and to have those courts hear the case en banc.  Also in the Washington Post, Robert Barnes considers how the Court may ultimately rule on the health-care law; he suggests that the evidence supports a wide range of predictions.

Barnes also reports for the Post on the issues at stake in Skinner v. Switzer.  Argued in October, the case involves a defendant?s request for post-conviction DNA testing.

Adam Liptak of the New York Times notes that next Tuesday will mark five years since Justice Clarence Thomas has asked a question at oral argument, and Liptak reviews the Justice?s explanations of his practice.  And on the op-ed page of the New York Times, Noah Feldman objects to the popular notion that the Justices should be insulated from political life.  Feldman produces many historical examples to the contrary and argues that ?the justices? few and meager contacts with the real world do little harm and perhaps occasionally some good.?

Lawrence Hurley of Greenwire reports that the Department of Justice has acted to remove the name of Laurence Tribe, until recently a senior counselor at the DOJ, from an amicus brief filed in American Electric Power v. Connecticut.  At the Volokh Conspiracy, John Elwood looks at the restrictions on briefs that can be filed by recent government employees.

Full post as published by SCOTUSBLOG on February 14, 2011 (boomark / email).