“Federal appeals court: Alabama discriminates against railroads in payment of state fuel tax.” The Birmingham News has this report on a ruling that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit issued today.

“Appellant’s Brief Filed in United States v. Auernheimer”: Orin Kerr has this post tonight at “The Volokh Conspiracy.” You can access the brief at this link.

“Ignoring the facts in a character attack of Justice Alito”: This letter to the editor appeared recently in The Washington Post.

“What’s Left? Have progressives abandoned every cause save gay marriage?” Law professor Barry Friedman and Dahlia Lithwick have this jurisprudence essay online at Slate.

“The Chief Justice Wants the Supreme Court to Stop Talking So Much; What an off-the-cuff comment by John Roberts says about the level of transparency in the judiciary, and how — slowly — it may be starting to change”: Andrew Cohen has this essay online today at The Atlantic.

“Shutdown of NLRB asked”: Lyle Denniston has this post tonight at “SCOTUSblog.”

And at the “Hollywood, Esq.” blog of The Hollywood Reporter, Eriq Gardner has a post titled “Cablevision Petitions Supreme Court Over Labor Dispute; James Dolan’s company says that the Obama Administration bypassed Congress in order to stack the National Labor Relations Board in favor of ‘Big Labor.’”

“Lawyers ask judges to halt Guantanamo forced-feedings”: Carol Rosenberg of The Miami Herald has this report.

“SCOTUS’s Prop 8 ruling will complicate ballot initiative process”: Alison Frankel’s “On the Case” from Thomson Reuters News & Insight has this report today.

“What Paula Deen Could Teach John Roberts: One week, two visions of Southern progress.” Chuck Thompson has this essay online today at The New Republic.

Access online Gibson Dunn’s Supreme Court Business Round-Up: You can access the report, issued today, at this link.

“How Not to Misunderstand Scalia”: Law professor Cass R. Sunstein has this essay online today at Bloomberg View.

“EPA wants Supreme Court to take case dealing with timing of suits challenging regulations”: Jeremy P. Jacobs of Greenwire has this report today.

“Are the Liberal Justices Savvy or Suckers? They are playing to beat John Roberts at his long game.” Law professor Richard L. Hasen — author of the “Election Law Blog” — has this jurisprudence essay online today at Slate.

“Appeals court won’t reverse three insider trading cases”: Nate Raymond of Reuters has this report.

Bloomberg News reports that “Ex-Galleon Trader Zvi Goffer’s 10-Year Sentence Is Upheld.”

And The Associated Press reports that “Court in NYC upholds insider trading conviction.”

You can access today’s ruling of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit at this link.

“New York Times Supreme Court Columnist Adam Liptak On John Roberts’ Long Game”: Hugh Hewitt has posted online at this link the transcript of his recent interview with Adam Liptak, U.S. Supreme Court correspondent for The New York Times.

In last Friday’s newspaper, Liptak had a front page news analysis headlined “Roberts Pulls Supreme Court to the Right Step by Step.”

“Bound Together on the Court, but by Beliefs, not Gender”: Adam Liptak will have this new installment of his “Sidebar” column in Tuesday’s edition of The New York Times.

Access online this year’s installment of MoloLamken LLP’s “Supreme Court Business Briefing”: The report, issued today, can be accessed here.

“Supreme Court Names New Clerk”: Tony Mauro has this post at “The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times.”

And at “SCOTUSblog,” Lyle Denniston has a post titled “New Court clerk named.”

Today, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a news release titled “Scott Harris named Clerk of the Supreme Court of the U.S.”

“From Aspen: Justice Kagan calls surveillance cases ‘growth industry.'” Alison Frankel’s “On the Case” from Thomson Reuters News & Insight has this report. Additional coverage can be accessed here and here.

“SCOTUSblog founder shares tips for business development and marketing”: Today, the ABA Journal has posted online this podcast featuring Tom Goldstein.

“U.S. court throws out Google digital books class status”: Jonathan Stempel of Reuters has this report.

Bloomberg News reports that “Google Books Plaintiffs Lose Class Status Over Fair Use.”

And The Associated Press has a report headlined “Court: No class-action status in Google book case.”

You can access today’s per curiam ruling of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit at this link.

Thanks to the Ninth Circuit, it’s nearly time for me to skedaddle to Seattle: Late next week, I am scheduled to make my first Ninth Circuit oral argument, before a three-judge panel consisting of Senior Circuit Judge Andrew J. Kleinfeld and Circuit Judges Milan D. Smith, Jr. and N. Randy Smith.

The oral argument will take place at the William K. Nakamura U.S. Courthouse (poster available) in Seattle, Washington, enabling me to make my first visit to Seattle. My son, who departs for his first year of college this fall, will be joining me, but sadly my wife is unable to attend, because she has some preexisting work-related commitments that require her to be elsewhere.

Before I visited New Orleans in March 2009, I asked readers of this blog for recommendations of things to do, places to visit, and restaurants, and this blog’s readers provided me with so very many great recommendations and ideas. Because Seattle, in addition to being a very nice place to visit, is also quite far away, I’m planning to arrive a couple of days early and head home a couple of days after the oral argument. That will enable us not only to see the Seattle Mariners host the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, but it will also leave other free time to visit the city and have some fun.

Readers who wish to offer recommendations of places to eat and/or things to do and places to visit in Seattle are invited to forward those suggestions to me at this blog’s email address. Thank you!

“Ginsburg, Thomas spar over race; court likely to get more affirmative-action cases”: Robert Barnes has this new installment of his “The High Court” column in today’s edition of The Washington Post.

“UC programs in lieu of affirmative action show limited success; UC has struggled to enroll more blacks and Latinos since a state ban on race-based admissions, an issue central to a recent Supreme Court case”: This article appears today in The Los Angeles Times.

“Supreme Court ‘carjacked the nation’ with same-sex rulings, Perkins says”: The CBS News program “Face the Nation” has this report.

“Court’s struggle: Consensus vs. polarized rulings.” Law professor Jeffrey Rosen has this op-ed today in The Philadelphia Inquirer.

On Saturday at The Aspen Institute’s Aspen Ideas Festival, Rosen interviewed Justice Elena Kagan. You can view the interview online at YouTube by clicking here. And in a related post, yesterday at his blog “Hercules and the Umpire,” Senior U.S. District Judge Richard G. Kopf had a post titled “Justice Kagan’s must read blog.”

In the July 8, 2013 issue of The New Yorker: Jeffrey Toobin has a “The Talk of the Town” comment titled “Adieu, DOMA: The political roots of marriage equality.”

And Louis Menand has “A Critic at Large” essay titled “The Color of Law: Voting rights and the Southern way of life.”

“Only lawyers now can argue before Supreme Court”: The Associated Press has this report.