Showing 1–50 of 57 items published in August 2007, most recent first.
The Supreme Court on Friday released the third and final list of summer orders on pending matters. There were no grants of review in any new cases. The next orders, probably including grants, are expected on Sept. 24 or 25 after the opening Conference of the new Term.
UPDATED 6:45 p.m. The Supreme Court on Wednesday released the calendar of oral arguments for the November sitting (which actually begins on Oct. 29). It can be downloaded here. On two of the six days, the Court will hear only a single case each. On other days, there will be two arguments.
From Professor Rory Little at UC Hastings College of the Law: I recently produced these Summaries of the Supreme Court’s Term, Criminal Cases, for the ABA’s Annual Meeting panel of the same name. (Note: Readers should feel free to reproduce the summaries, with attribution.)
On Friday the Solicitor General filed this amicus brief expressing the government’s view that cert. should be granted in No. 06-937, Quanta Computer, Inc. v. LG Electronics, Inc. The petition, which was filed by Maureen Mahoney of Latham & Watkins, presents the question whether “a patentee’s
The Court will issue its third and final round of summer orders on Friday. The blog will post anything of interest that appears on the Orders List. Top side briefs are due today in Riegel v. Medtronic (06-179). No bottom side briefs are due this week.
According to reports, current Solicitor General Paul Clement will replace Alberto Gonzales as Acting Attorney General when Gonzales leaves his post on September 17; CNBC is also reporting here that he is a frontrunner to be nominated by President Bush as Gonzales’s official replacement.
Commentary UPDATED 6 p.m. Smart, seasoned, energetic advocate of some of the Bush Administration’s most controversial legal positions — an apt description of U.S. Solicitor General Paul D. Clement, who takes over temporarily as Attorney General, and also of Deputy Solicitor Gregory G. Garre, who seems likely to assume at least temporarily the duties of Solicitor General.
Today is the deadline for top-side briefs in the detainee cases. Mayer, Brown is very helpfully posting links to all of them here. [UPDATE: The brief in Boumediene is here. Note that the Boumediene case is not limited to the habeas question.
Lawyers for detainees at Guantanamo Bay filed merits briefs today in Boumediene v. Bush (06-1195) and Al Odah v. United States (06-1196). The brief in Boumediene is here, and click here and here to read the petitioners’ briefs in Al Odah.
The U.S. Court of Military Commission Review, the tribunal set up by Congress to hear appeals in war crimes prosecutions, will hold its first hearing on its first case on Friday.
David Strauss (University of Chicago Law School) has recently written an excellent, very short essay responding to the Epstein, et al. piece on ideological drift, which I highlighted in the August 8 round-up, see here.
The Fourth Circuit Court on Wednesday agreed to reconsider the question of the President’s power to order the capture inside the U.S., and the prolonged detention afterward in a military prison, of a civilian suspected of terrorist ties.
Now that one burning question has been answered concerning the upcoming Stoneridge case — on Wednesday Solicitor General Clement filed an amicus brief in support of the companies — Tony Mauro discusses the next big question: “how many justices will participate and rule in the case?” Last week in
This morning, the Supreme Court will release its second round of summer orders – probably consisting mainly of actions on rehearing petitions. We will post anything of general interest that appears on the list.
To see today’s Orders List, click here.
The Supreme Court refused on Monday to reconsider its decision June 21 that upheld the 33-month prison sentence of Victor A. Rita, Jr. (Rita v. U.S., 06-5754).
In an order released this afternoon, the Court permitted three former members of the Securities and Exchange Commission, as well the chairmen of two House committees, to file late amicus briefs in support of the petitioner in Stoneridge Investment v. Scientific-Atlanta, et al. (06-43).
Saying that the two sides are “at loggerheads” over how much information the D.C. Circuit Court will need to judge decisions by the military to keep detainees at Guantanamo Bay, the Justice Department on Monday asked for more time to sort out what it is prepared to hand over.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the designated monitor of government wiretapping that reaches globally, has asked the federal government to react to a private group’s plea for access to that Court’s recent secret orders on eavesdropping.
The U.S. Solicitor General has obtained a postponement of the due date for filing a petition for review in a case testing U.S. courts’ authority to hear a challenge to the transfer of an American citizen to Iraqi authorities for criminal prosecution.
The Court has recently published this helpful memorandum for counsel regarding the Rules revisions. The Court has also issued a similar memorandum to printers covering the same ground.
The penultimate sentence in the Guidelines to which Tom linked is this: “Briefs submitted electronically should be available on the Court’s web site the next business day.” That database will be an enormously helpful resource — to litigants, counsel, scholars, students and researchers alike.
A flurry of stories and commentary followed the news yesterday that Solicitor General Paul Clement did indeed file a brief in support of the businesses in the upcoming Stoneridge v. Scientific-Atlanta case. Kara Scannell writes this article on the news for the Wall Street Journal.
UPDATED Friday AM with brief of American Bankers Assoc. Yesterday, we posted this entry about the Solicitor General’s amicus brief supporting an affirmance of the decision below in Stoneridge v. Scientific-Atlanta; in that post, we also linked to the parties’ merits briefs.
An NPR report filed by Larry Abramson discusses the “fate of desegregation efforts” in California and Massachusetts, following last term’s Parents Involved decision.
UPDATE 6:50 p.m. The motion described in this post was one of several that lawyers for Guantanamo Bay detainees have been filing in recent days and weeks, seeking to persuade the D.C. Circuit Court to move more rapidly to compel the government to file the records that counsel wants the Court to review in examining the legality of military detention decisions.
UPDATED 8/15, 10:20 PM: Added both sides’ merits briefs (at bottom of post, after jump). Switching sides in a major fight over securities law, the Bush Administration on Wednesday told the Supreme Court that the government generally opposes liability for third parties in fraud lawsuits if there is no proof that they directly deceived investors who were counting on them for solid information.
Lawyers for Ali Saleh Kahlah Al-Marri argued on Wednesday that the government should now have to take its chances in the Supreme Court if it wants to overcome a ruling that the military cannot capture and detain civilians living legally inside the U.S. and with ties to this country.
Justice Breyer acknowledged his “difficult year” in the opening assembly of the American Bar Association’s annual meeting, but he also discussed his pride in a legal system in which contentious issues are worked out “in the courts, not in the streets.” Read more of his message on judicial independence and the role of law in Tony Mauro’s piece for the Legal Times.
This week, we will begin our run-up to the Long Conference by posting several write-ups of noteworthy petitions that will be considered at the Long Conference on September 24.
Rick Hasen (Loyola Law School-Los Angeles) has posted “Beyond Incoherence: The Roberts Court’s Deregulatory Turn in FEC v. Wisconsin Right of Life” on SSRN, see here. Rick is one of the most knowledgeable election law scholars out there, and has an excellent blog on election law at this site.
The D.C. Circuit Court on Friday ordered the Justice Department fo provide a broader file of information for the Circuit Court to review as it considers the first case by a Guantanamo Bay detainee challenging a military decision to keep him confined as an “enemy combatant.” In a one-page order in
A progressive advocacy group, engaging the federal government in a prolonged dispute over warrantless electronic eavesdropping, moved on Friday to expand that lawsuit to include a challenge to the constitutionality of the new wiretap law, the so-called “Protect America Act.” The Center for
Based on the comments, it seems that there is quite a bit of interest in the event that was hosted by Pepperdine Law School featuring Justice Sam Alito and Carter Phillips.
ANALYSIS In less than a month, lawyers for the city government in Washington, D.C., will file a new appeal to the Supreme Court asking the Justices to try again — but for the first time in seven decades — to tell the Nation what the Second Amendment means.
Peter Yost of The Associated Press gives a brief history of class-action suits in the Supreme Court and discusses one such suit to be heard next term. An op-ed appears in the New York Times today on the same case — Stoneridge v. Scientific-Atlanta (subscription req’d).
UPDATE Tuesday a.m. The Belbacha petition for cert before judgment is now docketed at 07-173, and the petition for a writ of habeas corpus is at 07-174.
UPDATE Friday a.m. The Supreme Court’s decision on June 29 to hear next Term two cases on the rights of Guantanamo Bay detainees has led to an array of responses in the lower courts as they gauge the impact of the Court’s plans on other cases before them.
Ward Farnsworth (Boston University School of Law) has posted “The Use and Limits of Martin-Quinn Scores to Assess Supreme Court Justices, With Special Attention to the Problem of Ideological Drift” on SSRN, see here.
Justice Alito participated in a conversation with DC attorney Carter Phillips at Pepperdine Law School, answering questions about the justices’ preparation for cases, oral arguments and the Court’s shrinking docket. Tony Mauro has an article for the Legal Times on Alito’s reflections.
In a highly unusual plea to a notably secret court, the American Civil Liberties Union on Wednesday asked the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on Wednesday to release publicly a series of orders or opinions on the scope of the government’s power to conduct electronic eavesdropping that may affect Americans.
Even if the Supreme Court were to restore federal courts’ authority to hear Guantanamo Bay detainees’ challenge to their prolonged imprisonment, the Justice Department argued on Wednesday, that would not revive the power of the Supreme Court or any lower court to pass upon transfers of prisoners away from Guantanamo to foreign countries.
In a ruling that will now be appealed to the Supreme Court, the D.C. Circuit Court on Tuesday refused to recognize a new constitutional right for dying patients to have access to experimental drugs not yet cleared by the government for general public use.
On Sunday, Oliver W. Hill, the attorney for one of the five cases eventually decided under Brown v. Board of Education, passed away. Read the AP article on his life and work, here.
The Supreme Court is considering requests to allow late filings of amicus briefs, by members of Congress and former Securities and Exchange Commissioners, in the pending securities fraud case of Stoneridge Investment v. Scientific-Atlanta (No. 06-43), scheduled for argument Oct. 9.
A federal judge who ruled more than two and a half years ago that Guantanamo Bay detainees had no legal rights that a federal court could uphold — a position later embraced by the D.C. Circuit Court, but now under review in the Supreme Court — has decided to delay any action to implement his view while the Supreme Court studies it.
A decision by high-level officials of the Bush Administration not to support investors’ claims in a major securities fraud case the Supreme Court is set to hear has stirred efforts by others to make sure that the Justices know that federal regulators have been on investors’ side up to now.
Attorneys for a Texas man involved in a major test case on rights to benefits in employee plans urged the Supreme Court on Friday to go ahead and decide the case and to reject a move to dismiss the case as moot. The opposition to the dismissal motion in the granted ERISA case can be found here.
The D.C. Circuit Court ruled on Friday that the Justice Department and FBI violated the constitutional rights of a member of Congress when it seized paper files from his Capitol Hill office during a bribery investigation, finding that at least some of those documents involved “legislative material.” The case has appeared to be destined for the Supreme Court in a major test of separation of powers doctrine.
Attorneys for an Algerian national, Ahmed Belbacha, held for more than five years as a Guantanamo Bay detainee, on Friday asked Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., to order a delay of his impending transfer to his home country.