Author: Cormac Early

Briefly: Amanda Frost has another post in this blog’s "Academic Highlight" series, discussing a new article by Ernest Young on preemption in the Roberts Court. The Houston Chronicle has a profile of Josh Blackman, the founder of FantasySCOTUS.net, the Supreme Court prediction fantasy league. Justice Sotomayor attended the Yankees-Orioles game at Yankee...

Yesterday's coverage of the Court focused on a C-SPAN interview with Justice Scalia. The interview will air Sunday evening, but several preview clips are currently available on YouTube.  Tony Mauro has coverage for the Blog of Legal Times, as do Tal Kopan at Politico, Mark Sherman for the Associated Press, and Damon W. Root for Reason.  And at the ABA Journal, Lee Rawles reports on (and links to an audio file of) Justice Scalia’s interview with the Journal’s Richard Brust.

Yesterday's coverage of the Court focused on Justice Scalia's interview with Piers Morgan, in which he discussed his relationship with the Chief Justice and defended the Court's ruling in Citizens United v. FEC. Coverage comes from Josh Gerstein of Politico and Jesse J. Holland of the Associated Press.  Video of the interview is available here.

Coverage of the Court continues to focus on the Chief Justice and his vote to uphold the individual mandate.  At the Federalist Society's recently relaunched SCOTUSreport blog, Nicholas Rosenkranz argues that the Chief Justice’s application of the canon of constitutional avoidance in the health care decision was “exceedingly odd,” while at his Election Law Blog Rick Hasen contends that the Chief Justice “engaged in two worse applications of the canon in recent years.”  Responding to speculation that the Chief Justice changed his vote in response to political pressure, Sherry F. Colb argues in her Verdict column that in fact he “show[ed] integrity in successfully subordinating his loyalty to his four dissenting justices to” his loyalty to the Court as an institution. In a follow-up post at Dorf on Law, Colb also criticizes the four dissenting Justices.  And Linda Greenhouse has a post in the Opinionator blog of The New York Times on the "mystery of John Roberts."

Attention continues to focus on the decision in the Affordable Care Act litigation, and particularly on the spate of leaks about the Court’s deliberations, with regard to which Jan Crawford’s initial report for CBS continues to dominate.  At Salon, Paul Campos asserts that Chief Justice Roberts wrote both the majority opinion and most of the joint dissent, and John Fund of the National Review asserts that after initially voting to strike down the law's individual mandate provisions, Roberts expressed skepticism about throwing out the entire law. At Balkinization, Mark Tushnet reports on a pre-decision rumor "sourced to a clerk" that the Court had voted to strike down the act, and at the Volokh Conspiracy Orin Kerr reports on an apparent pre-decision leak to Ramesh Ponnuru of the National Review. He has further commentary here. The Hill's Healthwatch blog covers speculation about the identity of the leaker(s), and Ian Millhiser of Thinkprogress suggests that it may have been Justice Thomas. In The Washington Post, Charles Lane calls the leaks "slimy," while Daniel Stone at The Daily Beast says that the leaks show that the Court "is making an awkward shift to transparency and modernity," and Gerard Magliocca of Concurring Opinions argues that "this used to happen all the time back in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s."  At Balkinization, Neil Siegel calls for clear confidentiality rules for clerks.

The long wait is nearly over. At ten o'clock this morning, the Court will release the final three opinions of the Term. As ever, the lion's share of the coverage focuses on the challenge to the Affordable Care Act.  At this blog, Lyle Denniston has a reader's guide to the ruling, while Amy Howe summarizes the issues raised by the case in Plain English.  Ezra Klein of The Washington Post's Wonkblog discusses four ways the Court could "split the difference" in its ruling, while Bill Mears of CNN considers five possible outcomes. The Kaiser Family Foundation has also released a primer on the case, and Ekow N. Yankah discusses the reasoning behind the law for ACSblog. Meanwhile, NPR focuses on the ACA's expansion of Medicaid. Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, Randy Barnett and Ilya Somin have posted their reflections on the eve of the decision. Further coverage of the case comes from Jeffrey Young at the Huffington Post, Michael E. Ruane at The Washington Post, Brent Kendall, Louise Randofsky, and Jess Bravin of the Wall Street Journal, and Reuters.

With the end of the Term looming, all eyes are on the Court in anticipation of a decision in the challenges to the Affordable Care Act (ACA).  In the Los Angeles Times, Timothy Phelps reports on the process by which opinions are finalized and released, while at Concurring Opinions Nicole Huberfeld suggests that the recent torrent of speculation regarding the case "may speak more to the unpredictability of the Roberts Court than it does to the merits of the arguments."  At Reason, Peter Suderman outlines what he describes as “the most likely outcomes [of the case] and some of the possible ramifications of each,” and at The Volokh Conspiracy, Ilya Somin discusses a poll (in which he participated) of Supreme Court experts who, “on average, predict a 57% chance that the Court will strike down the individual mandate.”

Commentary on the imminent decision in the challenge to the Affordable Care Act continues to dominate coverage of the Court. Defending the law, Samuel Estreicher argues in the New York Law Journal that it would be "a constitutional blunder" to overturn the individual mandate, while in the National Law Journal, Robert Weiner imagines a Socratic dialogue between a supporter and an opponent of the law.

The impending decision in the challenge to the Affordable Care Act continues to drive coverage of the Court.  At Bloomberg News, Greg Stohr discusses "the hazard of predicting the outcome of Supreme Court cases" based on oral argument, while at ACSblog, Rob Weiner discusses the "partisan coloration" of the case.  At Verdict, Vikram Amar responds to an op-ed by Michael McConnell in the Wall Street Journal (subscription required) on May 24 which criticized "liberal law professors" who support the individual mandate.  Also at ACSblog, Jeremy Leaming argues that the challenge to the Affordable Care Act forms part of a broader effort by a "right wing 'infrastructure' that has its sights set on longstanding but weakened social safety net laws," while the Associated Press covers an interview with the incoming president of the American Medical Association, who told reporters that he does not expect "chaos" if the Court strikes down part or all of the ACA.  At Politico, Jonathan Allen notes that a ruling striking down parts of the law might save the government hundreds of billions of dollars in advance of looming budgetary battles, although a ruling striking down the entire law would slightly increase the deficit.  And the Constitution Daily blog of the National Constitution Center reports on a panel discussion on the Commerce Clause, in which Jack Balkin and Randy Barnett discussed the health care litigation. Briefly:

Coverage yesterday focused on the speech by retired Justice John Paul Stevens at the University of Arkansas in Little Rock, in which he criticized the Court's 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and argued that the Court has already begun to have second thoughts about the decision.  Writing for this blog, Lyle Denniston described the remarks as part of "[the] retired jurist's now well-developed habit of commenting on the continuing work of the Court, with candid expressions of when he agrees or disagrees with what it is doing or may yet do."  Other coverage comes from Pete Williams at MSNBC's First Read blog, Adam Liptak  at The Caucus blog of The New York Times, David Savage at the Politics Now blog of the Los Angeles Times, Mike Sacks of the Huffington Post, and the Associated Press (via The Washington Post).   In the blogosphere, Rick Hasen of Election Law Blog analyzes the Justice’s possible motivations for his speech, while Brian Wolfman also discusses the speech at Public Citizen's Consumer Law and Policy blog.