At the BU Law commencement on May 19, the featured speaker will be one of the most prominent lawyers in the United States, Donald B. Verrilli, Jr.

Verrilli has served as the Solicitor General of the United States since June 2011. He replaced Justice Elena Kagan at OSG. Previously, he was Deputy Counsel to President Obama and as an Associate Deputy Attorney General in the U.S. Department of Justice. Prior to his government service, he practiced law at Jenner & Block for over 20 years.

Some of the Verrilli’s work can be viewed at government web sites, in the numerous briefs and oral arguments in which he has represented the U.S. government before the Supreme Court.  He is also the author of many scholarly articles focusing on Supreme Court. C-SPAN provides video clips that highlight the audio recording of Verrilli’s oral arguments before the Court and his frequent participation at panel discussions on legal issues.

The Makers project highlights the contributions of prominent American women by providing interviews that explore the personal as well as the professional in these American lives. One the the featured pioneers is Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

The interview with Justice Ginsburg is here (after a sponsor’s ad), with extended segments that highlight her experiences: as a student at Harvard Law School, being rejected by law firms, her marriage, her work for the ACLU womens’ rights project and women and the law.

Other interviews in this series feature dozens of women from many different fields. The pioneers in law include: Sandra Day O’Connor, Maddy DeLone, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Catharine MacKinnon and Sarah Weddington.

A Justice’s retirement does not bring an end to dissenting opinions. Sandra Day O’Connor’s recently published book (Out of Order: Stories From the History of the Supreme Court) has received tough criticism from reviewers, especially from those who expected inside perspective about cases and issues where O’Connor played a key role during her years on the Supreme Court.

For example, Adam Liptak, who covers SCOTUS for The New York Times, was dismissive in his review:

She has a lot to say. But, the provocative title of her new book notwithstanding, she is not saying it here. Instead, she has delivered a disjointed collection of anodyne anecdotes and bar-association bromides about the history of the Supreme Court. “Out of Order” is a gift shop bauble, and its title might as well refer to how disorganized and meandering it is.

In a letter published in Sunday’s NYT Book Review, former Rep. Barney Frank, noting O’Connor’s comments referencing the Court’s shift to the right since her retirement, observes:

[T]hese reversals of her jurisprudence were entirely predictable results of her decision to time her resignation so that George W. Bush could replace her. After the 2000 election she said that because there was a Republican president, she could retire. Had O’Connor retired during the Clinton presidency, her successor would almost certainly have supported her decisions on campaign funding, abortion and affirmative action.

What she is expressing is an example of “resignation remorse,” and she should not be surprised by what she enabled.

The U.S. Supreme Court concluded oral arguments yesterday in the pair of cases on same-sex marriage that garnered much of the attention paid to law and legal issues this week. The transcripts and audio recordings are available for United States v. Windsor (here) and for Perry v. Hollingsworth (here).

Numerous reporters and commentators have weighed in with their observations, analyses and opinions. Some of the most interesting so far are from bloggers who write on law and public policy:

• Post-argument reports from Lyle Denniston (SCOTUSBlog) on Perry and Windsor
• Tom Goldstein (SCOTUSBlog), The relationship between DOMA and Proposition 8
• Dale Carpenter (The Volokh Conspiracy), Not there yet
• Jonathan Rauch (Brookings blog), Gay Marriage Hits the Supreme Court
• E.J. Graff (The American Prospect), Asked and answered

See also the exchange of views on SCOTUSBlog, with essays posted this morning by Gerard Bradley and John Bursch, with more to come.

Since the case involving the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act last Term, no oral arguments before the Supreme Court have been more anticipated than those on the two same-sex marriage cases to be argued this week: United States v. Windsor, re the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA); and Hollingsworth v. Perry, re California’s Proposition 8.

The Court’s web site provides visitor information and a guide for those attending their first oral argument. But that can hardly prepare one for the scene at the Court on those days. The lines to attend the oral argument began forming last Thursday night and are made longer by those who are paid to stand in them, holding a place for others. By Tuesday morning, despite bad weather on Sunday and Monday, there likely will be many times more people in line than possibly could attend even a few minutes of oral argument. Thousands more will be there for demonstrations and rallies.

Why the huge interest in these arguments? Last November, before the Court had decided to hear the cases, SCOTUSBlog’s Tom Goldstein provided some historical context:

I have never before seen cases that I believed would be discussed two hundred years from now.  Bush v. Gore and Obamacare were relative pipsqueaks.  The government’s assertion of the power to prohibit a loving couple to marry, or to refuse to recognize such a marriage, is profound.  So is the opposite claim that five Justices can read the federal Constitution to strip the people of the power to enact the laws governing such a foundational social institution.

The cases present a profound test of the Justices’ judgment.  The plaintiffs’ claims are rooted in the fact that these laws rest on an irrational and invidious hatred, enshrined in law.  On the other hand, that describes some moral judgments.  The Constitution does not forbid every inequality, and the people must correct some injustices (even some grave ones) themselves, legislatively.

Surprising some observers, the Court decided to hear both cases. The briefs have been filed. Possible outcomes have been anticipated, assessed and predicted by many observers (for example: here, here, here and here) and diagrammed here. Of course, much speculation focuses on the roles of Justice Kennedy and Chief Justice Roberts.

The arguments will be extensively covered by traditional press and social media.  Although the Court has never allowed television cameras to show the Court’s proceedings, audio recordings will be made available at the Court’s web site within hours of the arguments. But it won’t be necessary to wait that long for initial reports. Among others, The New Yorker‘s Jeffrey Toobin reports that he’ll be live-tweeting from the Court.

In a 6-3 decision today, the Justices definitively settled a matter of concern and difficulty under the copyright laws of the US.  As reported on the scotusblog.com, specifically the question answered, “ whether a U.S. copyright holder can prevent the importation of “gray-market” products manufactured for overseas markets?”  The case is: Kirtsaeng V. Wiley 

The facts of the case were compelling and showed a great degree of entrepreneurial finesse on the part of the Thai-national student who brought the appeal to the Supreme Court—he ultimately allegedly paid his educational costs and profited over 100,000$ from the scheme. As the Washington Post article writes, “In this case, the issue was whether U.S. copyright protection applies to items that are made abroad, purchased abroad and then resold in the U.S. without the permission of the manufacturer” and the Court decided affirmatively that NO, copyright protection does not apply.

(Justices Kagan and Alito noted in their separate opinion that Congress would be free to amend the law to provide more protection if it believes such protection is warranted. Stay tuned to see an all-out lobbyist frenzy on that front soon!)

On Monday, March 18th, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in Arizona v. The Inter-Tribal Council of Arizona  in which, as SCOTUS blog explains, “The new Arizona voting rights case is important not only because of the citizenship proof requirement, but perhaps even more so because it calls on the Court to sort out the cooperative but sometimes conflicting roles of the state governments and Congress in regulating election procedures.”

This will be the first SCOTUS decision on the myriad of Republican-led state initiatives in the 2012 election cycle to impose new voter-ID requirements.

Stay tuned!

As we move toward Spring, the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) is issuing an increasing number of decisions; there were nine decisions this week alone. This Term, important cases will be decided over the next four months, including the Monsanto seed patent case, argued earlier this week, and the marriage cases (Hollingsworth v. Perry and U.S. v. Windsor), to be argued in late March.

A variety of sources are available to keep track of new developments: some through subscription services, and some free to all.

Commercial updates include United States Law Week (among the suite of Bloomberg BNA titles), which provides extensive coverage of the Supreme Court, from news coverage to docket information to publication of full opinions. Users can create alerts on Lexis and Westlaw, to be notified of news or new opinions, whatever your preferences.

Among the free services for tracking new SCOTUS decisions are daily opinion summaries from Justia (just log in and click the box next to the court for which you want daily summaries of new opinions) and the Supreme Court Bulletin (subscribe to receive an email with the syllabus of each new SCOTUS decision) from Cornell’s Legal Information Institute (LII). Then there is SCOTUSblog, which provides exhaustive coverage of all things SCOTUS, including easy access to briefs and other informaton on pending cases in its Merits Cases section. Likewise, the ABA’s Previews pages offer background on each case to be argued before the Court.

Other tools? Consider following the Twitter feeds of journalists who cover the Court, including The New York Times’ Adam Liptak and Slate‘s Dahlia Lithwick; or SCOTUSblog; or such other feeds as @SCOTUSOpinions, which posts only links to new opinions.

To survey other sources of SCOTUS information, consult the library’s portal or (more generally) our links to legal news and blogs.

Students, for more tips and strategies for staying current, register for the Keeping Up with the Law certification class next week.

Think of it as fantasy football for the Supreme Court. Can you guess which petitions will end up being granted cert. by the Supreme Court in March 2013? Can you guess which parties in the merits cases will prevail?  Enter the Scotus Competition sponsored by the Scotus Blog. You and your team can win $5,000 if you beat the Scotus experts and $3,500 if you beat the other student teams. You must register by Feb. 28 and submit your picks by March 14.

NBC News reported today that the national board of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) is moving toward changing its policy banning openly gay scouts and scout leaders. Long controversial, the BSA policy was the subject of court battles until the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the BSA’s right to maintain its policy on First Amendment expressive association grounds. See Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, 530 U.S. 640 (2000).

Nationally, the BSA reaffirmed its policy last July. Since then, local BSA chapters have challenged the national policy, and corporate donors have pulled their funding, citing conflicts with nondiscrimination policies.

In a press release dated Jan. 28, BSA acknowledged that it “is discussing potentially removing the national membership restriction regarding sexual orientation.”