"I think it's important for me to nominate a Supreme Court nominee quickly because I think it's important for the Supreme Court to have its full complement of justices," President Barack Obama said today at a White House news conference. He added that he does not feel “constrained to a pool to draw from” following Senate Republicans’ plan to block the president’s nomination. The Associated Press shares a list of potential nominees.

Nearly 250 corporate lawyers sent a letter today to President Barack Obama and U.S. Senators urging the president to fill the U.S. Supreme Court vacancy. “…Nearly one third of all presidents have nominated a justice in an election year who was eventually confirmed,” the letter said. Read more from the ABA Journal.

The U.S. Supreme Court yesterday rejected an appeal from Apple in a case where the company is charged with creating an illegal conspiracy with publishers to raise electronic book prices. The 2010 price hike was in an effort to compete with Amazon.com. Apple has agreed to pay $400 million to be distributed to consumers and $50 million for attorney fees and payments to states who brought the lawsuit, the Associated Press reports.

The U.S. Supreme Court today reversed an Alabama court’s refusal to recognize a lesbian mother’s adoption that she and her partner had been granted in Georgia. The Alabama Supreme Court in September ruled a Georgia court had mistakenly granted a woman custody of three children following her split from her partner. The nation’s Supreme Court said Alabama’s decision ignored a long-standing precedent that state courts must recognize rulings by courts in other states. Read more from USA Today.

The nation’s High Court is closely divided over an abortion rights case regarding a Texas law imposing regulations on abortion clinics and doctors. The justices on Wednesday heard arguments in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, and USA Today reports Justice Anthony Kennedy appears to hold the outcome of the case in the now eight-person court. Much of the extended 85-minute arguments centered on “the definition of undue burden,” as the clinics argue the regulations have caused many Texas clinics to close. The outcome of the case will impact a challenge to Tennessee abortion laws filed by three state abortion clinics.

Minimal artistic skill is needed to enjoy a printable Ruth Bader Ginsburg coloring book. SheKnows says the coloring book is a good representation of the trailblazing U.S. Supreme Court justice: “(Ginsburg) encourages us to color outside the lines.”

Questions about Second Amendment rights today ended a 10-year silent stretch from Justice Clarence Thomas during oral arguments. The case before the court debates the reach of a federal law that bans people convicted of domestic violence from owning guns. Thomas last asked a question in court on Feb. 22, 2006, the Associated Press reports.

The U.S. Supreme Court will weigh judicial bias when it takes up an appeal from a Pennsylvania death row inmate claiming a state Supreme Court justice should have stepped aside from the case. The inmate argues the justice had previously signed off on his death penalty prosecution while serving as Philadelphia’s district attorney in the 1980s, the Associated Press reports. Philadelphia prosecutors argued the judge played a “fleeting part” in the decision to seek the death penalty. The High Court last issued a decision on judicial ethics in 2009.

The Washington Post reports President Barack Obama is considering Brian Sandoval, the centrist Republican governor of Nevada, as his pick to replace Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia on the nation’s High Court. The review process is in its initial phases and White House press secretary Josh Earnest has not commented on the consideration of Sandoval, a former federal judge.

The vacant space on the Supreme Court in the wake of Justice Antonin Scalia’s death is not likely to be filled with an originalist and this will cause the originalism to "fade away," Eric Posner says in his blog. Posner, a professor at University of Chicago Law School, says the gap in ideology on the High Court leaves legal scholars writing on originalism with no audience but themselves. “The audience for originalist scholarship — and I mean the audience with the power to use originalist scholarship to change people’s behavior and thereby to validate the importance of the scholarship — consists entirely of nine people: the justices of the Supreme Court,” he writes.