A couple sketches from the Supreme Court yesterday:
Justice Kagan annouced the Court's unanimous opinion supporting Monsanto's patent rights on its herbicide resistant genetically altered Roundup Ready seed.
NYT's Adam Liptak has the story here.
It was also Justice Breyer's first appearance on the bench since breaking his shoulder in a bicycle mishap two weeks ago.
The Supreme Court heard arguments yesterday in City of Arlington, Texas v. FCC, a case concerning the deference due an agency in interpreting the statute that it administers and more specifically in this case whether it can determine its own jurisdiction. (Am I starting to sound like a lawyer yet?)
Thomas Goldstein, pictured above, argued for the petitioner. Solicitor General Verrilli, shown seated, responded for the FCC.
NYT story here.
Conservative lawyer Miguel Estrada, whose nomination to the DC Circuit by President George W. Bush was succesfully fillibustered by Senate Democrats, went out of his way to support liberal Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan during her Senate confirmation. He called her "an impeccably qualified nominee", and wrote, "one of the prerogatives of the President under our Constitution is to nominate high federal officers, including judges, who share his (or her) governing philosophies". Later, in a letter to Senator Lindsay Graham, Kagan said of Estrada, "no one I know is a more faithful friend or a more fundamentally decent person".
The above sketch shows Estrada during today's arguments in a class action case, Comcast v. Behrend.
