Legal Commentary

Supreme Court Relist watch

By John Elwood

Of last week?s eight relists (discussed here), two were denied today: Stroud v. Blount and Wong v. Smith, the latter over the dissent of Justice Alito (joined by the Chief and Justices Scalia). Those were both cases on their first relist. The rest all appear to have been relisted yet again, so Alderman and Dismuke are on their second relist; Beer v. United States, Allen v. Lawhorn, Wilson v. Corcoran, and Williams v. Hobbs are all on their fourth (!) relist. (See my last post, linked above, for the questions presented.) Since my last post, the Court has called for (and received) the record on Allen v. Lawhorn.

Expect to see some writing from the Court on those soon. Wilson , Allen and Williams may be candidates for summary reversal, but it?s hard to know whether they are really serious candidates without examining the pleadings.

In addition, it looks like the court relisted for the first time in at least two more cases today.

NFL v. Williams, 09?1380, CA8, which presents the question whether, when federal subject matter jurisdiction is not in question, defenses that require analysis of a collective-bargaining agreement may substantively preempt state-law claims under Section 301 of the Labor-Managmenet Relations Act, 29 USC § 185(a), as the Seventh and Tenth Circuits have held, or whether such defenses are categorically irrelevant to preemption analysis, as the Eighth Circuit here and the Ninth Circuit have held.

Allshouse v. Pennsylvania, 09?1396, PA S.Ct., involving whether a child?s statements in an interview with a child protection agency worker investigating suspicions of past abuse are ?testimonial? evidence subject to the demands of the Confrontation Clause under Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004).

Let me know if you?re aware of others.

Full post as published by The Volokh Conspiracy on November 01, 2010 (boomark / email).