Cato on Upcoming Supreme Court Cases

Friday, October 2, 2009

Ilya Shapiro, senior fellow and editor-in-chief of Cato Supreme Court Reviewishapiro@cato.org:

Continuing its trend from this past term, the Court has further front-loaded its caseload with 56 arguments on its docket before the term has even started. Fortunately, unlike last year, we'll see many blockbuster cases, including:

• The applicability of the Second Amendment to the States;
• First Amendment challenges to national park monuments and a statute criminalizing the depiction of animal cruelty;
• an Eighth Amendment challenge to life sentences for juveniles;
• a potential revisiting of Miranda rights;
• federalism concerns over legislation regarding the civil commitment of "sexually dangerous" persons;
• a separation-of-powers dispute concerning the agency enforcing Sarbanes-Oxley;
• judicial takings of beachfront property;
• the "reasonableness" of mutual fund managers' compensation.

Perhaps more importantly, we also have a new justice and, as Justice White often said, a new justice makes a new Court. While Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation was never in any serious doubt, she faced strong criticism on issues ranging from property rights and the use of foreign law in constitutional interpretation to the Ricci firefighters case and the "wise Latina" speeches that led people to question her commitment to judicial objectivity. Only time will tell what kind of justice Sotomayor will be now that she is unfettered from higher court precedent and the first term is not necessarily indicative. Key questions for the new Court's dynamics are whether Sotomayor will challenge Justice Scalia intellectually and whether she will antagonize Justice Kennedy and thus push him to the right. We've already seen her make waves at the Citizens United, campaign finance reargumen by questioning the scope of corporations' constitutional rights, so it could be that she will decline to follow Justice Alito's example and jump right into the Court's rhetorical battles.

Upcoming Studies