How Appealing



Monday, October 6, 2014

“U.S. Appeals panel officially upholds Wisconsin voter ID law”: Patrick Marley of The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has this news update.

Reuters reports that “Appeals court says Wisconsin voter ID law constitutional.”

And The Associated Press reports that “Appeals court upholds Wisconsin voter ID law.”

Circuit Judge Frank H. Easterbrook wrote today’s ruling of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit on behalf of a unanimous three-judge panel.

At his “Election Law Blog,” Rick Hasen offers his quick reaction to the ruling.

Posted at 10:55 PM by Howard Bashman



“Kathleen Kane’s office trying to comply with Chief Justice Ronald Castille’s request in porn email scandal”: The Associated Press has this report.

Posted at 10:38 PM by Howard Bashman



“Risen: Journalists must fight or become irrelevant; Colby College’s Lovejoy winner, a New York Times reporter, faces the possibility of being imprisoned for refusing to reveal his sources.” Today’s edition of The Morning Sentinel of Waterville, Maine contains this front page article.

Posted at 10:32 PM by Howard Bashman



“BP Seeks Payment Changes That May Reignite Damages Fight”: Laurel Brubaker Calkins and Daniel Lawton of Bloomberg News has an article that begins, “BP Plc asked a U.S. appeals court to undo payments to some victims of the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill in a move opposing lawyers said might open the floodgates to hundreds of thousands of individual damage-claim awards.”

Posted at 10:15 PM by Howard Bashman



“Eyes on Sixth Circuit for Next Move on Same-Sex Marriage”: Tony Mauro of The National Law Journal has this Supreme Court Brief. You can freely access the full text via Google.

Mauro also has an item headlined “Docket Chat: Clement’s Milestone and a Jones Day Associate’s Debut.” You can freely access the full text via Google.

And Marcia Coyle of The National Law Journal has a Supreme Court Brief headlined “Supreme Court’s Silence on Marriage Rights Speaks Volumes.” You can freely access the full text via Google.

Posted at 8:07 PM by Howard Bashman



“Americans’ Approval of Supreme Court Steady at 44%; Job approval has been about evenly divided since 2012”: Gallup.com has this report today.

Posted at 7:44 PM by Howard Bashman



“High court glitch delays news on gay marriage”: The Associated Press has this report. According to the article, “The [order] list is also posted electronically, but it was only intermittently available on the revamped website the court rolled out Monday.”

And at “The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times,” Marcia Coyle has a post titled “Behind the Scenes: SCOTUS Media Room on Opening Day.” You can freely access the full text of the post via Google.

Posted at 3:42 PM by Howard Bashman



“Children’s group wants Supreme Court to force federal action on warming”: Jeremy P. Jacobs of Greenwire has this report.

Posted at 3:30 PM by Howard Bashman



“The Same-Sex Marriage Fight Is Over: By refusing to take a stand on lower-court decisions, the justices have effectively settled the fight — in favor of gays and lesbians who want to marry.” Garrett Epps has this essay online at The Atlantic.

Posted at 1:54 PM by Howard Bashman



“Supreme Court Allows Gay Marriage to Begin in 5 States; Justices Decline for Now to Make Nationwide Decision on Issue”: Brent Kendall of The Wall Street Journal has this news update.

Posted at 1:49 PM by Howard Bashman



“SCOTUS Communications Problem Today Highlights Transparency Issues”: Rick Hasen has this post at his “Election Law Blog.”

Posted at 1:20 PM by Howard Bashman



“The Glaring Falsehood That Could Steal Health Care Away From Millions Of Americans”: Online today at ThinkProgress, Ian Millhiser has a post that begins, “A lawsuit that will cause the structure of Obamacare to ‘crumble,’ according to a state attorney general who is one of the lawsuit’s leading proponents, rests on a falsehood about how one former senator helped shape the act.”

Posted at 10:56 AM by Howard Bashman



As of 10:40 a.m. eastern time, the U.S. Supreme Court has still not posted a link to today’s Order List on its web page created for that purpose: Today, the U.S. Supreme Court launched a redesigned web site. While the redesigned site looks attractive, the most important aspect of any web site is functionality.

Last year, the Court had its lengthy Order List from the first Monday in October available online within six minutes.

Today, by contrast, more than an hour has passed and the Court’s Order List is still not available online via the page created for that purpose. To be sure, the Orders List is available online at this link. You can’t learn that now, however, from the U.S. Supreme Court’s own site.

Update: The Court finally posted a link to its Order List at or shortly after 10:45 a.m. eastern time. Here’s hoping that a link to next week’s Order List can be posted online somewhat more promptly than 75 minutes after its issuance.

Some have suggested that this may have been an issue affecting certain web browsers but not others. I was refreshing the page using Google Chrome.

Posted at 10:40 AM by Howard Bashman



“Denying Review, Justices Clear Way for Gay Marriage in 5 States”: Adam Liptak of The New York Times has this news update.

Robert Barnes of The Washington Post has a news update headlined “Supreme Court declines to review same-sex marriage cases.”

Richard Wolf of USA Today reports that “High court ruling may lead to gay marriage in 30 states.”

Josh Gerstein of Politico.com reports that “SCOTUS turns down same-sex marriage challenges.”

And Benjamin Goad of The Hill reports that “Court paves way for gay marriage.”

Posted at 10:04 AM by Howard Bashman