U.S. Supreme Court's Monday status conference: Listening to the Supremes

by Kimberly Atkins The Daily Record Newswire It was an eventful week leading up to last week's first oral argument of the new Supreme Court term. On Friday, Justice Elena Kagan was officially welcomed as the court's newest member in an investiture ceremony attended by President Barack Obama and retired Justices John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor and David Souter. That ceremony came days after the court announced that, for the first time, audio recordings of all oral arguments will be made publicly available on the Court's website on a weekly basis. The recordings will be posted at the end of each week after the justices' Friday conference. Previously, audio recordings, which are maintained by the National Archives, were not available until the beginning of the following term. The court also previously allowed C-SPAN to broadcast audio of certain high-profile oral arguments later in the same day - a practice that will end under the new policy, according to C-SPAN. ''While we applaud The Court's new policy, which helps advance the cause of greater public access to the institution, we do regret that it comes at the expense of occasional same-day release of arguments in cases with heightened public interest,'' said C-SPAN President Susan Swain in a statement. ''Reporting on these key cases will be out for several days before the public is able to hear the arguments for themselves, in the justices' own words. "We continue to hope that the court's next step will be same-day release of all oral arguments, and ultimately, television coverage of its public sessions.'' The court also added a host of new cases to its docket Tuesday. The issues the justices will decide in those cases include whether a federal trial court can enjoin a state court from certifying a product liability class action involving the drug Baycol, whether a foreign company can be sued in state court for introducing a dangerous product into the stream of commerce that injured residents of that state, and whether a federal bankruptcy court's award of damages in a counterclaim trumps a Texas state court ruling awarding a decedent's estate to another party - the latest in the ongoing battle between the estates of Anna Nicole Smith and her late husband J. Howard Marshall. Published: Mon, Oct 11, 2010

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