Yesterday, the Supreme court granted
certiorari to several of the challenges to the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act.
Here's a great roundup of several news stories. I like the
NPR story for a quick summary of the issues. The Court will hear a total of 5.5 hours of oral argument, and a decision is expected by the end of the current term, in June.
posted by insectosaurus
on Nov 15, 2011 -
77 comments
We have explained that the matching funds provision substantially burdens the speech of privately financed candidates and independent groups. ... We have explained that those burdens cannot be justified by a desire to “level the playing field.” In a 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court has
struck down an Arizona law that provided public funds to candidates who have been outspent by either private funding or independent spending.
Link to PDF of full decision. [more inside]
posted by gerryblog
on Jun 27, 2011 -
105 comments
How “secure” do our homes remain if police, armed with no warrant, can pound on doors at will and, on hearing sounds indicative of things moving, forcibly enter and search for evidence of unlawful activity?
Supreme Court OKs More
Warrantless Searches [more inside]
posted by AceRock
on May 17, 2011 -
305 comments
Waukeshocker! After Tuesday's painfully close, still undecided Supreme Court race between JoAnne Kloppenburg and David Prosser, Republicans warned that partisan election officials in certain municipalities might conveniently find bushels of extra uncounted votes after the fact.
It has come to pass -- but the extra votes were found in deep-red Waukesha County, represnting the entire city of Brookfield, and give GOP favorite David Prosser a probably insurmountable 50.2%/48.8% lead. Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus's policy of storing election returns on a personal computer in her office with no backup
was criticized last August. Nate Silver says
the new numbers look reasonable.
posted by escabeche
on Apr 7, 2011 -
255 comments
Library Rights Are at Stake in New Supreme Court Copyright Case Article by Marc Parry appeared in: "Chronicle of Higher Education" March 8, 2011, 4:12 pm
Does Congress have the right to restore copyright protection to foreign works that have fallen into the public domain?
That issue is at the heart of a major copyright case that the Supreme Court agreed to hear yesterday. Its resolution could have implications for libraries’ ability to share works online, advocates say.
posted by naight
on Mar 9, 2011 -
27 comments
The Sunshine Foundation, a non-profit group dedicated to government transparency & accountability, has obtained Supreme Court nominee
Elena Kagan's emails from her time in the Clinton White House & made them available in a handy web application. Browse, read, search & mark those you find interesting for others to read.
posted by scalefree
on Jun 23, 2010 -
26 comments
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled unanimously against a fourth amendment claim of a right against an employer search of texts on a work pager. The decision, City of Ontario v. Quon, rejected the claims, by the officer and by others who texted him on the device, that the employer city and the city's service provider violated their rights by reviewing transcripts of the text messages.
Justice Kennedy's decision assumed the officer had a reasonable expectation of privacy. However, he said, the city’s search was not unduly intrusive. There was a “legitimate work-related purpose” for the audit, Justice Kennedy wrote. The city “had a legitimate interest in ensuring that employees were not being forced to pay out of their own pockets for work-related expenses, or on the other hand that the city was not paying for extensive personal communications.” Interestingly, the officer's direct supervisor
had told him that he could use the pager for personal messages, as long as he paid their cost. Kennedy nonetheless opined for the Court that he likely only had a "limited privacy interest." The Court did not reach the question of whether there is an employee privacy interest in email on work servers, or conversations on work telephones.
posted by bearwife
on Jun 17, 2010 -
58 comments
Yesterday, in a
highly split decision with six separate opinions, the United States Supreme Court overturned a Ninth Circuit ruling in
Salazar v. Buono. The issue at hand? Whether the location of the
Mojave Memorial Cross represented an unconstitutional endorsement of religion. The Ninth Circuit decided that it did, but its ruling has been called into question by the high court on several levels.
[more inside]
posted by Riki tiki
on Apr 29, 2010 -
114 comments
Theodore Olson was the 42nd United States Solicitor General, serving from June 2001 to July 2004. He also was attorney general during the Ronald Reagan administration, where he defended Reagan during the
Iran-Contra affair. He appeared before the Supreme Court fifty-five times as solicitor general, most recently arguing Bush's side in the case
Bush V. Gore which decided the outcome of the 2000 election. He is a member of the
Federalist Society, which seeks to reform constitutional law to bring it more in line with an originalist interpretation of the constitution, and was on the board of
The American Spectator magazine.
But his current case, which he says could be the most important case of his career, has many fellow conservatives scratching their heads. Because Theodore Olson is going to
argue before the Supreme Court in favor of overturning
California's Proposition 8 and thus legalizing same-sex marriage.
posted by EmpressCallipygos
on Aug 19, 2009 -
57 comments
Today began Judge Sonia Sotomayor's Senate confirmation hearings, with opening remarks from the Senators on the Judiciary Committee, introductions from NY Senators Schumer and Gillibrand, and an
opening statement from Judge Sotomayor herself. Among the shouted protests from pro-life advocates in the gallery, highlights included Sen.
Lindsay Graham's statement about what he thinks the advise-and-consent function of the senate should entail, and
Sen. Al Franken's first real moment in the U.S. Congress.
posted by Navelgazer
on Jul 13, 2009 -
86 comments
Today, on the last day of this year's term, the Supreme Court of the United States issued its
opinion in
Ricci v.
DeStefano, the latest in the Court's line of decisions on
Title VII and the role of race in employment decisions. The famous case centers on white firefighters' claims of
race discrimination following the town of New Haven's decision to scuttle a
promotion exam after white test takers performed disproportionately better than black firefighters.
[more inside]
posted by Law Talkin' Guy
on Jun 29, 2009 -
89 comments
In an 8-1 ruling, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday that school officials violated an Arizona teenager's rights by strip-searching her for prescription-strength ibuprofen, declaring that U.S. educators cannot force children to remove their clothing unless student safety is at risk.
Clarence Thomas demurred, suggesting that panties would become the new drug underground.
posted by dejah420
on Jun 25, 2009 -
62 comments
Ed Whelan, a lawyer and conservative law pundit at National Review has been
making
the rounds criticizing Sopreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, largely for her statements regarding judges making policy. publius, a pseudonymous legal blogger, wrote a harshly
critical post of Whelan's behavior, accusing him of being a willing stooge of the right-wing - a "legal hitman"
In response Whelan
outed publius, publishing his identity on the National Review website. publius
added his side of the story. It's also worth reading
Volokh's take on the original policy debate, which publius and Whelan each use in defense of their position
posted by crayz
on Jun 7, 2009 -
117 comments
The previously-
mentioned Summums want to
place their own monument in a park which contains the Ten Commandments, making the Supreme Court's
heads explode in a a hilariously weird
oral argument[pdf]:
"Scalia: I don't know what that means. You keep saying it, and I don't know what it means. [...] Breyer: Suppose that there certain messages that private people had like "eat vitamins"—and then somebody comes along with a totally different content, "ride the roller coaster," and they say this part of the park is designed to get healthy children, not put children at risk." [more inside]
posted by Non Prosequitur
on Nov 13, 2008 -
116 comments
The current FCC case [
PDF] before the U.S. Supreme Court presents a fascinating dilemma for the judges:
how do you respectfully discuss the legality of profane words in the nation's highest court? And for reporters: how do you report on the specifics of the case? It seems decisions vary across publications:
NYT,
Washington Post (reg req),
LA Times,
Wall Street Journal,
Slate,
The Atlantic,
Bloomberg,
AP,
McClatchy. As for the judges themselves,
they opted to allow only substitute terms.
PDF transcript with word count at bottom.
Background.
posted by Tehanu
on Nov 6, 2008 -
26 comments
"Officer Sean Devlin, Narcotics Strike Force, was working the morning shift. Undercover surveillance. The neighborhood? Tough as a threedollar steak. Devlin knew. Five years on the beat, nine months with the Strike Force. He’d made fifteen, twenty drug busts in the neighborhood." Dashiell Hammett? Raymond Chandler? Nope.
Chief Justice John Roberts (pdf).
posted by Knappster
on Nov 4, 2008 -
16 comments
The Supreme Court today issued a one line statement
refusing to hear Troy Davis' appeal.
Troy Davis was convicted of the 1989 murder of a police officer in Savannah, GA, and sentenced to death solely on eyewitness testimony. No murder weapon or any physical evidence linked him to the crime. Since the conviction, seven of the nine witnesses have recanted or changed their stories, and one of the two who haven't changed their stories is the other suspect in the case. Things were looking good for Davis when the Supreme Court
issued a stay two hours before his execution last month. Justice may really be dead in this country.
posted by x_3mta3
on Oct 14, 2008 -
60 comments
