Federal Judiciary

Monday round-up

By Akin Gump Supreme Court Practice Group

C-SPAN has this video of a recent discussion of the role of the Solicitor General by former Solicitors General Paul Clement, Drew Days, and Kenneth Starr; Justice Kennedy provided opening remarks.

Rick Hasen of Election Law Blog notes his surprise that the opinion in Citizens United v. FEC will not come down until next year.  The Politico also has a report on the potential consequences of the ruling.

David Savage of the L.A. Times discusses City of Ontario v. Quon, in which the Court granted cert. today to review the Ninth Circuit?s holding that the Fourth Amendment protects employees? privacy interests in sexually explicit text messages on company-provided phones.

Late last week, Eugene Volokh at the Volokh Conspiracy and David French at the National Review Online debated whether public universities are constitutionally required to provide exclusive religious groups equal access to their facilities, a subject raised by Christian Legal Society v. Martinez.  UPI also has a story previewing the case.

Courthouse News Service analyzes the oral argument in Stolt-Nielsen v. Animal Feeds, a case about arbitration in class action suits; Stanford?s Vivian Wang recapped the case for SCOTUSblog last week.

At Jost on Justice, Kenneth Jost has a new book review of Joan Biskupic?s biography of Justice Scalia.

Also at The Volokh Conspiracy, Orin Kerr has an article arguing that the issue of whether warrantless GPS surveillance violates the Fourth Amendment is already answered in the Court?s existing precedent in Knott and Karo.

Full post as published by SCOTUSBLOG on December 14, 2009 (boomark / email).