Supreme Court Lifts Ohio Federal Judge Voter Order: At SCOTUSblog, Lyle Denniston reports that today the Supreme Court lifted an order that would have required Ohio's Secretary of State to verify voter registration across the state before the November election. The per curiam order can be found here. The Ohio Republican Party had obtained a court order from an Ohio district court forcing its Secretary of State to comply with Section 303 of the Help America Vote Act of 2002. Yesterday, the Secretary of State petitioned the Court to stay the order. The Supreme Court found that because the GOP was "unlikely to prevail on the question of whether Congress has authorized the District Court to enforce Section 303 in an action brought by a private litigant to justify the issuance of a [Temporary Restraining Order]." Yesterday's Blog Scan had this post on the challenge. Jonathan Adler at Volokh Conspiracy also has a post with his thoughts on Brunner v. Ohio Republican Party.

The Chief Justice's Dissent in Pennsylvania v. Dunlap: Supreme Court blogs have been commenting on the opening paragraphs Chief Justice Robert's Dunlap dissent this week. The first two paragraphs read like a detective novel, and the rest of the dissent follows traditional "opinion-speak" style. Tony Mauro at Blog of the Legal Times has this post, SCOTUSblog had this post, the Volokh Conspiracy has this post, and even the ABA Journal has chimed in with this story. Dunlap involved review of "Whether the observation by a trained police officer of two individuals exchanging currency for a small unknown object creates sufficient probable cause of a drug transaction to permit a warrantless search." The Court denied review on Tuesday. In Orin Kerr's post at the Volokh Conspiracy he wonders why the Chief Justice adopted the crime noir style to open his dissent. He says he "can't be sure; perhaps it was just to be entertaining." Check out the comments to see what our own Kent Scheidegger believes to be the purpose of Roberts' new style.

New Sentence For Hamdan Sought By DOJ: At Wall Street Journal Blog Dan Slater reported that the Justice Department filed a motion on September 24 requesting that Hamdan's sentence be reconsidered. The government released the document yesterday and Jess Bravin, at Wall Street Journal Online, had this story today. Apparently, the government is claiming the the military judge lacked authority to credit Hamdan for the time he served in pretrial confinement. Without this credit Hamdan could serve five more years. Gitmo's Chief prosecutor, Col. Lawrence Morris, claims that, unlike courts-martial, military commissions cannot credit defendants for time served. Hamdan's is currently scheduled for release on December 31.

New Law Review Article on Supreme Court's Death Penalty Actions: Yesterday, Doug Berman posted on his Sentencing Law and Policy Blog that Ohio Northern University Law Review had accepted his article, "A Capital Waste of Time? Examining the Supreme Court's 'Culture of Death'" for publication. Berman posts that his article addresses his familiar "grumblings" with the Supreme Court's tendency to consider on the merits too many death penalty cases and too few other cases, but will provide more footnotes, data and ideas.