Federal Judiciary

New feature: “This week on the Wiki”

By Akin Gump Supreme Court Practice Group

Starting today, we will be instituting a new weekly post called ?This Week on the Wiki,? where we will recap all substantive updates made over the past seven days to the case pages on SCOTUSwiki, our companion site.  Email us at SCOTUSblog.feedback@gmail.com to let us know your thoughts on this new feature!

Earlier this week, the Supreme Court handed down its first opinions of the term, and we have updated four case pages accordingly. The pages for Alvarez v. Smith, Beard v. Kindler, Mohawk Industries v. Carpenter, and Union Pacific Railroad v. Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers now include links to the Court?s rulings. In addition, the Mohawk and Union Pacific pages now include opinion analyses (published yesterday on SCOTUSblog), and the Alvarez and Beard pages will soon be updated to include similar commentary.

The Court also heard arguments in five cases this week, and as a result, we have updated the Wiki to include the argument commentary published on the blog.  On the Free Enterprise v. PCAOB page, we have added analysis by our own Lyle Denniston, while the Florida v. Powell page now includes a preview and recap from Stanford Law School?s Sam Bateman and an argument analysis from Lyle.  On the two ?honest services? cases argued this week, Weyhrauch v. United States and Black v. United States, we have added Lyle?s commentary, as well as a close examination of the Weyhrauch argument by Stanford?s Rakesh Kilaru.  Vivian Wang, also from Stanford Law School, wrote on this week?s argument in Stolt-Nielsen, S.A. v. AnimalFeeds International Corp., and we have updated that case page accordingly.

A number of case pages were updated this week to include links to newly filed merits and amicus briefs.  The page for Mac?s Shell Service v. Shell Oil and Shell Oil v. Mac?s Shell Service now links to a new supplemental brief; reply briefs were added to the pages for Briscoe v. Virginia, Granite Rock Company v. International Brotherhood of Teamsters, and United States v. Comstock; and we have linked to new petitioners? briefs in Berghuis v. Thomkins, Carr v. United States, Hui v. Castaneda, Kiyemba v. Obama, Samantar v. Yousuf, Skilling v. United States, United States v. O’Brien, and United States v. Marcus.  We also added Amicus briefs to the Wiki pages for Abbott v. Abbott, American Needle v. NFL, Carr v. United States, Hui v. Castaneda, Jerman v. Carlisle et al., Lewis v. City of Chicago, McDonald v. City of Chicago, and Samantar v. Yousuf.

As always, we have also updated the Wiki to reflect current media and blog coverage of each case on the Supreme Court?s docket this term. You can check this up-to-date coverage by navigating to the ?Links and Further Information? section on the Wiki case pages.

Full post as published by SCOTUSBLOG on December 12, 2009 (boomark / email).