MetaFilter posts tagged with law and supremecourt

Has the Supreme Court Become Too Catholic

jefficator — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 17:23:27 -0800

Has the Supreme Court become too Catholic?

By The Content Of Their Character

Law Talkin' Guy — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 20:28:48 -0800

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. The case has been covered extensively in blogs and the mainstream and local media. In addition to the high-stakes questions at issue in the case itself, Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor sat on the panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit that summarily decided the case at the intermediate appellate level.

Oh, for F-bomb's sake

Tehanu — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 14:36:43 -0800

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.

The Supreme Court and America’s international relations

homunculus — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 11:00:24 -0800

When Judges Make Foreign Policy. "In a globalized, post-9/11 age, decisions made by the Supreme Court are increasingly shaping America's international relations. When the next justice is appointed, our place in the world may well hang in the balance."

Permission to approach the buffet?

Horace Rumpole — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 10:41:20 -0800

Learned handmade plates. For all your law-themed collectible plate needs. Some background. Etsy shop.

SCOTUS tells the ICJ to go hang

valkyryn — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 19:31:30 -0800

On March 25, the Supreme Court held (pdf) that rulings by the International Court of Justice are essentially not binding upon state courts. This paves the way for Texas to execute one Jose Ernesto Medellin for the rape and murder of two teenage girls. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals judgment of the ruled (caution: disastrously formatted HTML) in 2006 that Medellin's objections, grounded on the fact that the Mexican consulate was not notified of his trial, were not sufficient to vacate his conviction, as he had been provided with a competent legal defense and none of his constitutional rights had been violated. The ICJ held (huge pdf) (summary) that the Vienna Convention creates individually enforceable rights, that Medellin's rights had been violated, and that Texas should order a new trial. President Bush, surprising everyone, ordered Texas to comply. The Supreme Court, which voted 6-3 to affirm the Texas court, held 1) that judgments of the ICJ are not directly enforceable as domestic law, and 2) the President cannot require states to effectuate the judgments of foreign courts. --- The Court's 2005 opinion (pdf) withdrawing certiorari as improvidently granted. Commentary: Volokh: (1, 2) OpinioJuris: (1, 2) And! discussion questions!

"we upheld against proportionality attack a sentence of 40 years' imprisonment for possession with intent to distribute nine ounces of marijuana" - Justice Kennedy

daksya — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 06:04:29 -0800

DrugPolicyCases.com - Yakov Spektor, a New York-based attorney, combed through two decades of US Supreme Court opinions "to discern certain trends in the Court's treatment of various issues" related to the War on Drugs. The collection of opinions are organized by case, author and topic.

Catherine Roraback

serazin — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 21:43:50 -0800

Catherine Roraback was the only woman in her class at Yale Law School. She was a founder of the Connecticut ACLU, and a president of the National Lawyers Guild. During her long career she defended labor organizers, immigrants, civil rights organizers, Black Panthers, and maybe most famously, Estelle Griswold before the United States Supreme Court in the case that legalized the distribution of birth control. She died this week at age 87. One more bio and the NYT obit.

New Supreme Court Opinions

dios — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 10:15:51 -0800

A very big day for the Supreme Court. In Morse v. Fredrick, the Court ruled that a school could suspend a child for holding up a "Bong HiTs for Jesus" banner. (Previous post here). In Hein v. Freedom from Religion, the Court held that taxpayers lacked standing to challenged Faith Based Initiatives (previous discussions). In Wilke v. Robbins, the Court held that land owners do not have Bivens claims if the federal government harasses landowners for easements. In FEC v. Wisconsin Right to Life, the Court held that the portion of the campaign finance law which had blackout periods before elections on issue advocacy advertising was an unconstitutional restriction of speech (other). This Thursday, the Justices will deliver their last opinions of the term, including a death penalty case and the school assignment cases. (Opinions are .pdfs)

Is that Constitution still living? Slap it a few times to make sure.

ibmcginty — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 08:41:19 -0800

"Is any jury going to convict Jack Bauer? I don't think so. So the question is really whether we believe in these absolutes. And ought we believe in these absolutes. ... I don't care about holding people. I really don't." Justice Scalia on 24 and torture. 24 and torture previously.

Poverty and the right to council

sindark — Sat, 26 May 2007 05:27:37 -0800

In 2005, the Supreme Court of British Columbia decided that taxing the legal services of the poor "constitutes indirect taxation and is a tax on justice contrary to the Magna Carta and the Rule of Law." Yesterday, the Supreme Court of Canada overturned the decision, rejecting "the respondent’s contention that there is a broad general right to legal counsel as an aspect of, or precondition to, the rule of law." The case was largely the initiative of Dugald Christie, a Vancouver lawyer and political activist who devoted his life to the cause of improving access to the legal system, before dying on a cross-Canada bicycling fundraiser ten months ago. He is well remembered by lawyers and cyclists.

Partial-Birth Abortion Ban

homunculus — Tue, 08 May 2007 21:25:58 -0800

New Justices, New Rules: How the Supreme Court's Validation of the Federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act Affects Women's Constitutional Liberty and Equality. A two-part FindLaw analysis of Gonzales v. Carhart.

“I think it’s bad, long-term, if people identify the rule of law with how individual justices vote.”

ibmcginty — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 18:09:02 -0800

Chief Justice John Roberts, decrying “the personalization of judicial politics,” describes his efforts to increase comity on the Supreme Court and to decide more cases unanimously. In Roberts' first term as chief justice, “while a relatively large number of the Court’s decisions” were unanimous, “several important, closely divided cases” were decided by 5-4 votes, with Roberts joining the more conservative justices.

The Limits of Free Speech in Schools

digaman — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 09:46:40 -0800

From the guy who brought you the Whitewater scandal and the impeachment of President Clinton for lying about oval antics in the Oral Office, a legal push to make the Supreme Court just say no to "Bong Hits 4 Jesus." Ken Starr's petition to the Court [PDF] makes clear that Starr believes this is no laughing matter, but a chance for the Court to make a landmark ruling that will give school adminstrators the power to limit student speech: "This case presents the Court with a much-needed opportunity to resolve a sharp conflict among federal courts (and to eliminate confusion on the part of school boards, administrators, teachers, and students) over whether the First Amendment permits regulation of student speech when such speech is advocating or making light of illegal substances."

Luttig resigns Fourth Circuit post.

monju_bosatsu — Wed, 10 May 2006 09:28:11 -0800

Luttig Resigns. Judge J. Michael Luttig, long considered a front-runner for a Supreme Court nomination, at least until he was passed over by President Bush, has resigned his position on the Fourth circuit. Luttig will take over as general counsel to Boeing. Read Boeing's press release and Luttig's resignation letter [pdf].

Please don’t let the cops in the house while I’m at the store.

brain_drain — Thu, 23 Mar 2006 10:00:15 -0800

Yesterday the U.S. Supreme Court held in a 5-3 decision (.pdf) that police may not search a home if any inhabitant of the home is present and objects to the search, even if another inhabitant consents. The Court drew what it acknowledged is a “fine line” – if a co-inhabitant is at the door and objects, the police can’t enter; but if the co-inhabitant is somewhere else – even in a nearby police car – and has no opportunity to object, then police don’t need his or her consent. Chief Justice Roberts issued his first written dissent, blasting the majority’s “random” and “arbitrary” rule and suggesting that the ability of police to respond to domestic violence threats could be compromised. The zingers in the footnotes may reveal “strains behind the surface placidity and collegiality of the young Roberts court.”

Pontius Pilate — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 02:39:55 -0800

The Fourth Amendment provides, in part, that "...no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause." The Supreme Court has issued its (yet another) 8-0 opinion, authored by Justice Scalia in the case of United States v. Grubbs, overturning the Ninth Circuit decision. Justice Souter filed a concurring opinion. Grubbs deals with the question of anticipatory warrants, and it is the first time that the Court has addressed the practice. It appears that under this ruling, preemptive warrants can issue without existing probable cause, but merely on the supposition that probable cause will exist in the future.

Some legal scholars had anticipated that at least the more conservative members of the Court would rule against anticipatory warrants. After all, under Blackstone's analysis of the common law rule that contributed to the Fourth Amendment, as noted by Professor Orin Kerr in the NYU Journal of Law and Liberty symposium on the subject, warrants "issue" when they are signed by the judge, and not when the precedent condition occurs. Professor Chris Slobogin disagrees. Kerr has posted a preliminary analysis of the decision on his new blawg. The case has previously been discussed by the smart people over at the Volokh Conspiracy.

Just how important are law clerks?

monju_bosatsu — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 10:55:52 -0800

David Garrow reviewed Justice Blackmun's papers, released to the public in 2005, and concludes that towards the end of his career, Blackmun's clerks all but signed his opinions. In an interview, discussing senility and Supreme Court Justices, Garrow argues that there has been "a dramatic increase over the last 35 or 45 years in the amount of the justices’ work that is performed by their law clerks," and recommends a "reduction to two or, even better yet, one clerk" from the four clerks available per Justice now. Garrow also comments on the now-deceased Chief Justice Rehnquist, who suffered from an addiction to painkillers in the 1980s. Garrow's view is controversial, though, and Legal Affairs published several responses in the same issue. Other law professors have weighed in, including Dan Markel, Mark Tushnet, and some of the folks at the Volokh Conspiracy. So how large is the impact of law clerks?

Supreme Court Oral Argument MP3s.

monju_bosatsu — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 11:38:50 -0800

The Oyez Project has placed online mp3s for all of the arguments from the 2004 term of the United States Supreme Court. The 2004 terms spans all cases argued between October 4, 2004, and April 27, 2005, including United States v. Booker and United States v. FanFan, Roper v. Simmons , Raich v. Gonzales, Kelo v. City of New London, McCreary County v. ACLU, and Van Orden v. Perry. [slightly more inside]

Alito's First Vote

monju_bosatsu — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 12:25:11 -0800

Alito's First Vote. In his first significant act on the Supreme Court, Justice Alito splits with his conservative colleagues, and votes to refuse to let Missouri execute a death-row inmate contesting lethal injection. You can read the (very short) order on page four of yesterday's order sheet [pdf]. More commentary at SCOTUSblog, and discussion of Alito's approach to the death penalty is available at Sentencing Law & Policy.

Grokster shuts down

falconred — Mon, 07 Nov 2005 14:26:58 -0800

Grokster shuts down after their Supreme Court defeat [pdf] this summer, Grokster has chosen to settle its case with MGM et al., admit to wrongdoing, and stop distributing its software. Their website now displays the message: "There are legal services for downloading music and movies. This service is not one of them.". Another victoy for Hollywood in the intellectual property war. Who's next?

free at las

halekon — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 16:48:42 -0800

“Matthew Limon, the gay man at the center of a Kansas law struck down by the state Supreme Court, was freed late Thursday night, but his ordeal may not be over.

Bush names Harriet Miers to Supreme Court

gleenyc — Mon, 03 Oct 2005 05:37:53 -0800

Bush nominates Harriet Miers Bush has nominated Harriet Miers to replace Justice O'Connor. The first woman elected to the Texas Bar, she was Bush's personal attorney in Texas, and has served as Counsel to the President since Feb, 2005.

Washington Post
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SCOTUS Blog

Howard Dean Again Ratchets up Anti-Bush Rhetoric.

dsquid — Sun, 31 Jul 2005 18:40:11 -0800

Howard Dean Again Ratchets up Anti-Bush Rhetoric, this time blaming the President's right-wing supreme court for the recent Kelo ruling. These comments strike some as confusing, seeing as how none of the justices at the time were appointed by the President, and 3 of the dissenters are considered to be the most conservative members on the bench.

at least it's not Luttig?

amberglow — Tue, 19 Jul 2005 16:51:09 -0800

the Supreme Court Short List --read it and weep, or not. CNN is already reporting it's John Roberts, and not Edith Clements. Bush announces at 9pm est. Roberts worked for both Reagan and Bush 1, btw.