Federal Judiciary

Wednesday round-up

By Akin Gump Supreme Court Practice Group

Yesterday the Court released opinions in Florida v. Powell and Hertz Corp. v Friend, and it heard oral argument in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project and United States v. O?Brien.

Brent Kendall of the Wall Street Journal reports on Hertz Corp. v. Friend, in which the Court held that for purposes of federal diversity jurisdiction, a corporation should be considered a citizen of the state in which its ?nerve center? ?usually the company?s headquarters ? is located. Debra Cassens Weiss of the ABA Journal, Jonathan Stempel of Reuters, and the Chamber Post also have coverage of the decision.

Debra Cassens Weiss of the ABA Journal also summarizes Florida v. Powell, in which the Court upheld the version of the Miranda warnings read to Kevin Powell, a Florida prisoner who asserted that the warning did not communicate that he could have a lawyer throughout his interrogation.  Greg Stohr of Bloomberg observes the majority opinion represents a new limit on the Court?s 1966 decision in Miranda v. Arizona.  Warren Richey of the Christian Science Monitor also reports.

Reuters analyzes yesterday’s oral argument in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, the First Amendment challenge to a statute prohibiting the provision of aid to terrorist groups.    David Savage of the L.A. Times, ACSblog,  Bloomberg, the WSJ, the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Washington Post, and SCOTUSblog all have coverage, as does the Center for Constitutional Rights.

Ashby Jones of the WSJ reports that twenty-one former judges and prosecutors and thirty legal ethics experts filed amicus briefs on Monday supporting the request for a retrial made by Charles Hood, who was sentenced to death twenty years ago by a Texas judge who had been sleeping with the prosecutor in his case.  The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected his appeal, holding that Hood had waited too long to allege that the relationship constituted a conflict of interest.   ACSblog also has coverage of the case.

Briefly:

• Marcia Coyle recaps the oral argument in Lewis v. City of Chicago for the BLT.
• Writing for Concurring Opinions, Gerald Magliocca comments on the high number of summary reversals this term, a topic recently addressed by Kevin Russell of SCOTUSblog.
• Virginia Thomas, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, recently launched a website to serve as an online community for those working to ?preserve freedom and reaffirm the core founding principles,? reports Tony Mauro.
• In an opinion piece for the NYT, John Farmer Jr. discusses this Term?s honest services, corruption, and terrorism cases in light of what he describes as ?the most fundamental underpinnings of Anglo-American criminal and constitutional law.
• On Monday, the Court declined to hear three environmental cases, writes Gabriel Nelson of Greenwire (posted at the Times).

Full post as published by SCOTUSBLOG on February 24, 2010 (boomark / email).