On Tuesday, February 12, WLF held its annual media briefing on the U.S. Supreme Court at its mid-term/winter break point. As we’ve traditionally done, the program focused largely on cases to which the Court has granted cert since the term commenced back on the First Monday of October. The program, which was moderated by former Attorney General Dick Thornburgh, can be viewed in its entirety, at readers’ leisure, by clicking here (if you don’t have Microsoft Silverlight installed on your computer, you will be prompted to do so before you can view).
Our speakers, Patricia Millett, Roy T. Englert, Jr., and Catherine E. Stetson, focused on cases arising in the areas of intellectual property, arbitration, antitrust, class actions, and federal preemption.
One theme that emerged from the discussion was how many of the cases the Court will address in the coming months are “follow-on” cases from recent past Supreme Court decisions. Ms. Stetson termed this phenomenon the “deja vu docket.” She and the other panelists drew the following lines between past and current cases:
- PLIVA v. Mensing → Mutual Pharmaceutical v. Bartlett
- Wal-Mart v. Dukes → Comcast v. Behrend
- Stolt-Nielsen v. AnimalFeeds Int’l → Oxford Health Plans v. Sutter
- AT&T v. Concepcion → American Express v. Italian Colors
- Mayo v. Prometheus Labs → Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics
We would humbly add two cases that the speakers did not directly address from the “first half” of the October 2012 term: