Showing 1–50 of 132 items published in June 2009, most recent first.
We represent the petitioners in two cases that were granted yesterday, No. 08-645, Abbott v. Abbott, and No. 08-1200, Jerman v. Carlisle. In Abbott, the Court will construe the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, to which the United States is a party.
Please note that Howe & Russell filed an amicus brief in this case on behalf of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, National Fair Housing Alliance, and NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. in support of the petitioner.
Exxon Mobil Corp. and its oil tanker subsidiary notified lawyers for fishermen and others harmed by the massive Alaska oil spill 20 years ago that on Wednesday it will pay them $470,268,908, but returned to a federal court to continue a fight over another $54.5 million.
It’s always perilous to try and generalize about a Supreme Court Term. Roughly 80 cases on diverse topics decided by nine different people don’t collectively produce clear themes.
UPDATE 4:08 p.m. Republican Norm Coleman on Tuesday afternoon ended his fight for reelection to the U.S. Senate, bowing to a decision of the Minnesota Supreme Court that his opponent, Democrat Al Franken, had won the most votes and was entitled to enter the Senate. “The [state] Supreme Court has made its decision and I will abide by the results,” Coleman told reporters in St. Paul, the Associated Press reported.
As updated below in the Super StatPack, our annual summary memo of statistics from OT08 is available here. We welcome any citation, republishing, or repurposing of these facts and figures. We ask that you acknowledge SCOTUSblog as the source.
At 10 a.m. on Monday, the Court will release orders from the Justices’ private conference last Thursday. The final three opinions from pending cases are also expected to be released. We will provide instant coverage of all decisions via our LiveBlog.
At 10 a.m. EDT, the Court will release the orders from the Justices’ private conference last Thursday. The outstanding opinions in pending cases are expected to be released. We will LiveBlog the public session.
Here (as one file) are all of our stats, charts, lists, and observations about the just-concluded Term and here are visual representations of the voting lineups in each decision.
Beginning at 10 a.m. Eastern, we will provide “live” coverage of the Court’s release of opinions and orders. In the “LiveBlog” below, we will relay all developments as quickly as possible. We will post links to the slip opinions as soon as they are available.
Lawyers for 13 Guantanamo Bay prisoners learned Monday that the Supreme Court has put off any action on their case until its next Term. After noticing that the Court had issued no order on the case of Kiyemba, et al., v. Obama, et al.
Justice Kennedy’s opinion in Ricci will inevitably be put under the microscope for what it tells us about the Justices’ views of how the Second Circuit panel that included Judge Sotomayor handled the case.
Here is a copy of the Chief Justice’s letter from all of the current Justices and retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor expressing their well wishes to retiring Justice David H. Souter. Here is a copy of Justice David H. Souter’s replying letter.
(NOTE: This post is an updated and modified version of a post that appeared here earlier this afternoon about the new Briscoe case.)
The Supreme Court on Monday afternoon ordered a schedule for filing new constitutional arguments when the case of Citizens United v. F.E.C. (08-205) is heard, before the opening of the new Term.
Analysis The cases of Frank Ricci and his 17 New Haven, Conn., firefighter colleagues — all whites except one Hispanic — now return from the Supreme Court to lower courts, with only one thing settled: their rights under a federal civil rights law were violated.
Oral arguments have concluded for the term. No non-capital orders are expected, but if any orders are issued today in pending cases, we will post them promptly.
New to SCOTUSwiki, here, is Stanford student JP Schnapper-Casteras’ discussion of the Court’s recent decision in Boyle v. US.
A new StatPack of preliminary data from all released opinions is available here. We now also have a visual representation of the Justices’ voting lineups. Our finalized data, additional charts, and Term summary memo will be issued early next week.
UPDATE: The Maloney petition has now been docketed as 08-1592. ————– A Port Washington, N.Y., lawyer and martial arts enthusiast asked the Supreme Court on Friday to use his case to expand the coverage of the Second Amendment’s “right to keep and bear arms” so that it applies to restrict or bar state and local laws, as well as those at the federal level.
At 10 a.m., the Court will release one or more opinions in pending cases. We will LiveBlog the public session. The Justices are scheduled to hold a private conference this morning, orders from which are expected to be released the following Monday.
Two years after the Supreme Court last ruled on abortion restrictions, a new test case is likely on its way to the Court, perhaps reaching there by next Fall. Responding to an order by the Justices to take a new look at a Virginia abortion ban, the Fourth Circuit Court on Wednesday upheld the law.
Beginning at 10 a.m. Eastern, we will provide “live” coverage of the Court’s release of opinions. In the “LiveBlog” below, we will relay all developments as quickly as possible. We will post links to the slip opinions as soon as they are available.
The Supreme Court has finished issuing rulings for the day, without releasing a decision in the Ricci cases — the New Haven firefighters job discrimination litigation.
Hours after President Obama signed into law a new set of restrictions on release of Guantanamo Bay detainees, lawyers for a group of prisoners told the Supreme Court Thursday that the law appears to violate the Constitution. That raises the stakes on the case of Kiyemba, et al., v. Obama, et al.
Analysis Sending new constitutional instructions to public school officials on how far they may go to search students for drugs or other harmful items, the Supreme Court has set two limits: one mostly unchanged from before, and one new.
In case you haven’t followed our morning live blogs, here are summaries of and links to the slip opinions released this week. The Court’s final session will be next Monday, at which the three outstanding opinions will be released. Coeur Alaska, Inc. v. Southeast Alaska Conservation Council, et al.
Analysis Expressing a heavy dose of skepticism that crime lab reports are so reliable as to be beyond question, the Supreme Court on Thursday cleared the way for chemists and other scientists who prepare such reports to be summoned to the witness stand in criminal trials to defend their analyses.
Oral arguments have concluded for the term. No non-capital orders are expected, but if any orders are issued today in pending cases, we will post them promptly. The Court will hold a public session tomorrow at which one or more opinions in pending cases may be released.
Oral arguments have concluded for the term. No non-capital orders are expected, but if any orders are issued today in pending cases, we will post them promptly.
In a significant legal breakthrough for Guantanamo Bay prisoners, the federal judge who has previously upheld the broadest detention power for the government ruled on Monday that torture of an individual and the passage of time after he had ties to terrorism can end his status as an enemy of the United States, and require his release.
Though the Supreme Court by a wide margin today formally declined to resolve a challenge to the constitutionality of Section 5, the reality is far different. The decision unambiguously served notice that the Justices are prepared to invalidate the statute as it stands.
At 10 a.m., the Court will release the orders from the Justices’ private conference last Thursday. One or more opinions in pending cases may also be released.
Beginning at 10 a.m. Eastern, we will provide “live” coverage of the Court’s release of opinions and orders. In the “LiveBlog” below, we will relay all developments as quickly as possible.We will post links to the slip opinions as soon as they are available.
Recent Stanford Law School graduate Beverly Moore discusses last Monday’s decision in Polar Tankers. On Monday, June 15, the Supreme Court shed light on the contours of the Constitution’s Tonnage Clause.
The Supreme Court, granting review of three cases Monday, agreed to settle the constitutionality of a 2005 law giving federal officials authority to order the long-term confinement of individuals considered to be sexually dangerous (U.S. v. Comstock, 08-1224).
With only one Justice voting to strike down Congress’s 25-year extension of the Voting Rights Act’s controversial Section 5, the Supreme Court on Monday interpreted the law in a way that saves it.
Analysis Under the Voting Rights Act as it now stands, its Section 5 — the part that requires a number of states and many local governments to get approval in Washington to change their election laws — is due to last until 2032.
Stanford clinic student Samantha Bateman discusses Thursday’s decision in Yeager. On Thursday, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Yeager v. United States, ruling in favor of petitioner F. Scott Yeager, a former Enron Corp. executive who had been acquitted of several securities and wire fraud counts by a jury that deadlocked on the remaining counts in the indictment.
Stanford clinic student Tiffany Cartwright discusses this morning’s decision in Forest Grove. Today, the Supreme Court held that parents of disabled children can seek reimbursement for private education expenses regardless whether their child had previously received special-education services from a public school.
On Monday, the Court will release orders from the Justices’ private conference last Thursday. One or more opinions in pending cases may also be released. The petitioner’s brief on the merits is due Monday in Perdue v. Kenny A (08-970). No respondent’s brief on the merits is due this week.
Analysis On the eve of the Supreme Court’s planned look at the most significant sequel to its year-ago ruling in Boumediene v. Bush, Congress has moved to take control of the fate of Guantanamo Bay detainees in ways that could cut back sharply on the power of the courts, and also could limit the President’s powers.
A discussion of the recently published book, A Good Quarrel, accounts of oral arguments before the Supreme Court, will be broadcast on CSPAN-2 this weekend and early next week. The University of Michigan Press announcement can be found here.
The government of Bermuda Premier Ewart Brown, after an apparently hostile 14-hour debate in that island nation’s parliament, early Saturday survived a vote of no-confidence over the agreement to allow four Chinese Muslim Uighur detainees to live there after years as U.S. detainees at Guantanamo Bay.
This edition of “Petitions to Watch” features cases up for consideration at the Justices’ private conference on June 25, the final conference of this Term. As always, the list contains the petitions on the Court’s paid docket that Tom has deemed to have a reasonable chance of being granted.
Oral arguments have concluded for the term. No non-capital orders are expected, but if any orders are issued today in pending cases, we will post them promptly.
With a little over a week left in this Term, there are 10 merits opinions left to be released. The Court will hold its next public session on Monday at 10 a.m. The last scheduled day of the Term is Monday, June 29.
Former Stanford clinic student Brian Goldman discusses Monday’s decision in No. 08-495. After two decisions earlier this Term favoring non-citizens’ interpretations of immigration-related statutes (Flores-Figueroa v. United States and Nken v. Holder), the Supreme Court ruled unanimously for the government on Monday, June 15, in Nijhawan v. Holder.
*Tues., June 30, 2009 at 8:30 a.m.: The Washington Legal Foundation will hold a media briefing at the M.J. Murdock Center on 2009 Massachusetts Ave, N.W. in which the speakers will assess rulings that affect the free enterprise system.
At 10 a.m., the Court will release one or more opinions in pending cases. The Justices are scheduled to hold a private conference this morning, orders from which are expected to be released the following Monday. If any orders are released this afternoon, we will post them promptly.