Showing 1–50 of 103 items published in February 2007, most recent first.
Attempting to draw the Supreme Court back into the legal side of the “war on terror,” two men being held captive by the U.S. military on Tuesday urged the Justices to restore the right to challenge their detention and criminal prosecution.
Beginning at 10 AM eastern, the Court is expected to release at least one opinion on the merits; we will bring you coverage as they are released. The Court will then hear one hour of oral argument in Hein v. Freedom From Religion (preview here).
The following argument recap is by Erik Zimmerman of the Stanford Supreme Court Litigation Clinic. His preview of this case can be found here. On Monday, the Court heard argument in EC Term of Years Trust v. United States (No. 05-1541).
UPDATE to 11:45 a.m.: Today’s decision in Whorton v. Bockting (05-595) can be downloaded here; it was the only opinion released by the Court. The Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Wednesday that its major ruling on the Confrontation Clause in Crawford v. Washington is not to be applied retroactively, to cases that were final before that ruling came down on March 8, 2004.
The Supreme Court will take up at its Friday Conference a plea by two Guantanamo Bay detainees to consider their appeal on an expedited basis, according to the Court’s electronic docket.
The transcript in Hein v. Freedom From Religion Foundation, Inc. is now available here.
Federal taxpayers who contend that the government is using their money to promote religion probably can still gather outside the federal courts, and go in with lawsuits to challenge that spending.
The AP’s Mark Sherman reports here on the Court’s unanimous decision today in Worton v. Bockting, holding that a cross-examination rule is not retroactive; Jeannie Shawl of the Jurist has this post; the Volokh Conspiracy’s Orin Kerr has this post; at Sentencing Law & Policy, Doug Berman weighs in here.
The following argument preview is by Molly Cutler of the Stanford Supreme Court Litigation Clinic. On February 27, 2007, the Court will hear Winkelman v. Parma City School District, which asks whether the non-lawyer parents of a disabled child can appear pro se in federal court either on their own behalf or on behalf of the child in a lawsuit under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).
Last week, this cert. petition (with appendix) was filed in the case of Zoltek Corp. v. U.S.; it has been docketed as 06-1155. Dean Monco of Wood Philips in Chicago is counsel of record; with him on the brief are Erik Jaffe of Erik Jaffe, P.C.; Garry Grossman of Schiff Hardin; and John Mortimer and Bert Bertoglio, also of Wood Philips.
Beginning at 10 AM eastern, the Court will hear one hour of oral argument in Winkelman v. Parma City School District (preview here). According to the Court’s opinion line, no opinions are expected to be issued today. A transcript should be available sometime this afternoon.
Another skirmish in America’s culture war reaches the Supreme Court on Wednesday, in a case that some are trying to turn into a fundamental reexamination of the meaning of the Constitution’s Establishment Clause.
Two Guatanamo Bay detainees, both facing war crimes charges before U.S. military “commissions,” on Tuesday asked the Supreme Court to put their joint appeal on a fast track for decision in the current Term.
The transcript in Winkelman is now available here.
The AP has this article on today’s argument in Winkelman. In the National Law Journal, Marcia Coyle reports here at Law.com on Hein v. Freedom From Religion, which will be heard before the Court tomorrow.
The following argument preview is by Erik Zimmerman of the Stanford Supreme Court Litigation Clinic. On Monday, the Court will consider the interplay between two distinct methods for recouping taxes collected by the Internal Revenue Service.
The Court returns to the bench today at 10 AM eastern. At that time, the Court will first release an Orders List relating to its Conference of 2/23; we will bring you coverage of that as soon as it is released.
The orders are here. The grants are 06-571, Watson v. US, 06-637, NY Board of Education v. Tom F., and 06-713/730, Washington State Grange v. Wash. State Republican Party/Washington v. Washington State Republican Party (documents here).
UPDATE 1:25 PM: Added cert. papers in Watson case. The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to decide whether states may constitutionally open up their primary elections to voters of all parties, voting on a common ballot, if the candidates are identified on the ballot by party.
If Supreme Court Justices in February 2007 cannot agree on how reasonable or unreasonable it is for a police officer to stop a fleeing suspect’s car by ramming it from the rear at about 90 miles an hour, could a police officer in Georgia have guessed the answer in March 2001?
At Law.com, Tony Mauro of the Legal Times has this preview of the Winkelman case, which will be argued tomorrow. Ross Runkel of the Supreme Court Times Blog offers previews and predictions of this week’s arguments here.
The transcript in EC Term of Years Trust can be downloaded here, and Scott v. Harris can be found here.
Mike Small of Akin Gump’s LA office is counsel of record on this newly-filed amicus brief supporting the respondent on behalf of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers in the case of Roper v. Weaver (06-313).
High-speed chases by police are standard fare in movies and on television, but their status under the Constitution is not finally resolved. The Supreme Court has taken on that task in the case of a police “bumping” of a fleeing suspect’s car to stop it, resulting in a crash that left the driver paralyzed in both arms and both legs.
A number of recent newspaper articles have examined the decline in the Supreme Court’s plenary docket. These articles were prompted by the fact that a number of argument slots in the February and March calendars went unfilled, and the Court compensated by overloading its April docket.
The following argument recap was written by David George, an appellate lawyer at Connelly Baker Maston Wotring Jackson LLP in Houston, Texas. His preview of this case can be found here. The Supreme Court heard argument in Microsoft Corp. v. AT&T Corp. (No. 05-1056) on Wednesday, February 21.
The Court is holding a private Conference today to discuss new and pending cases. All orders relating to this Conference are expected to be released Monday at 10 AM eastern. Our list of “Petitions to Watch” for this Conference can be found here.
Earlier this week, the Stanford Clinic filed this amicus brief on behalf of the National School Boards Association in support of the petitioner in Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Assoc. v. Brentwood Academy, No. 06-427.
The latest “Supreme Court Today” from Aaron Streett of Baker Botts, recapping this week’s decisions and grants, can be found here. Eric Turkewitz weighs in on the Philip Morris decision and Justice Stevens’s dissent here.
No oral arguments are scheduled and no non-capital orders or opinions are expected to be issued today.
UPDATE: Brief for National Wildlife Federation, et al, added. For those who are interested, we are posting the briefs filed thus far in Wilkie v. Robbins, No. 06-219, in which we filed the Brief for the Respondent this week (see prior post describing the issues involved).
I would like to thank Tom and the rest of the SCOTUSblog team for inviting me to become a full-time contributor to this blog. For those of you who don’t me, I am an associate professor of law at the University of Minnesota, and my scholarly writing is largely focused on the Supreme Court, see here.
Jim Puzzanghera has this article in today’s LA Times on Microsoft v. AT&T; Jess Bravin of the Wall Street Journal reports here; and in today’s Washington Post, Robert Barnes and Alan Sipress report here.
The Supreme Court on Thursday afternoon refused to order the Pentagon to provide to a Guantanamo Bay detainee, Yemeni national Sharaf Al Sanani, information on why he is being held as an “enemy combatant.” The application (Al Sanani v. Bush, 06A797) had been filed with Chief Justice John G.
Lawyers for Guantanamo Bay detainees plan to file soon — perhaps by the end of next week — one or more appeals in the Supreme Court challenging Tuesday’s ruling by the D.C. Circuit Court that ordered an end to all detainees’ habeas challenges.
The following argument preview was written by David George, an appellate lawyer at Connelly Baker Maston Wotring Jackson LLP in Houston, Texas. On Wednesday, February 21, 2007, the Supreme Court will hear argument in No. 05-1056, Microsoft Corp. v. AT&T Corp. This case is about whether a company can violate U.S. patent law by sending software contained on a master disk overseas for copying and installation.
With so much news on multiple fronts, here’s a quick guide to the day that was: The Supreme Court began a new sitting at 10 AM by releasing an Order List and three opinions; they can be downloaded via this post, and our article recapping these developments is here.
Beginning shorrtly after 10 AM Eastern, the Court will hear one hour of oral argument in Microsoft v. AT&T (preview here). The Court is also expected to issue some decisions on the merits in pending cases. A transcript of the Microsoft argument should be available sometime this afternoon.
The Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that an individual filing a civil rights lawsuit claiming a false arrest by police must sue within a time period that begins to run at the time of detention, not after any resulting conviction or sentence has been overturned.
Akin Gump is co-counsel on this merits brief, which was filed yesterday on behalf of the petitioner in the case of BCI Coca-Cola Bottling v. EEOC. E. Todd Presnell of Miller & Martin in Nashville is counsel of record.
The transcript in Microsoft v. AT&T is available here.
Lawyers for a Guantanamo Bay detainee, Sharaf Al Sanani, told the Supreme Court Wednesday that a lower court ruling closing federal courts to detainees’ challenges to detention is not binding on the Supreme Court.
AP writer Mark Sherman has this article on the decision in Wallace v. Kato. AP writer Pete Yost reports here on the ruling in Marrama v. Citizens Bank of Massachusetts. Yost also has this report on yesterday’s decision in Lawrence v. Florida.
The Court returns to the bench today as a new sitting begins at 10 AM eastern. The Court will first release an Orders List relating to its Conference of 2/16; we will bring you coverage of that as soon as it is released. The Court also may release decisions on the merits.
The Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that it is unconstitutional for a jury to award punitive damages out of a desire to punish a company for harming individuals other than those directly involved in the lawsuit — that is, “strangers to the litigation.” The Court ruled 5-4 in the case of Philip
The D.C. Circuit Court on Tuesday ruled that Congress had taken away the federal courts’ authority to hear habeas challenges to the detention of foreign nationals at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The Court also ruled that this did not amount to an unconstitutional suspension of the writ of habeas corpus.
11:16 AM: This morning, the Supreme Court released an Order List granting two cases (download here), and it also released opinions in three cases: Weyerhaeuser v. Ross-Simmons Hardwood Lumber (05-381, download here) Philip Morris USA v. Williams Estate (05-1256, download here) Lawrence v. Florida (05-8820, download here) A post recapping these developments is here; more commentary is forthcoming.
Following up on Lyle’s post, I’ve posted over on Balkinization some very preliminary thoughts on the D.C. Circuit decision in the GTMO detainee cases.
The transcript in Rita v. U.S. has just been posted here. UPDATE: The transcript in Claiborne is now available here.
Yesterday’s edition of “Conference Call” in Legal Times (column archive here; subscription req’d) featured petitions to watch for both the Justices’ Conference of 2/23 and 3/2.