Showing 1–50 of 58 items published in May 2006, most recent first.
There hasn’t yet been any discussion on this blog — or on many others, as far as I know — about the two newly published studies of Supreme Court clerks: Courtiers of the Marble Palace: The Rise and Influence of the Supreme Court Law Clerk, by Todd C. Peppers, and Sorcerers’ Apprentices: 100 Years
UPDATE 11:10 a.m. The Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to clarify or reinforce its 2003 decision laying down guidelines on the amount of punitive damages that juries may award for corporate wrongdoing. The Justices agreed to so in a case appealed by tobacco giant Philip Morris.
UPDATED 10:45 a.m. The Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that the First Amendment does not provide protection for comments that a public employee makes in the course of performing regular duties, even if the comments alleged public corruption or government wrongdoing.
The Court issued its opinion today in Garcetti v. Ceballos, No. 04-473, originally argued in the Ocotber sitting and then reargued after Justice Alito joined the Court.
Jack Balkin has an extended post explaining that the Court’s public-employee-speech doctrine, culminating in this morning’s decision in Ceballos, has strayed very far from the objectives the Court sought to advance in Pickering, to the point where it’s most protective of employee speech in the
Here is an article by Tony Mauro titled, “High Court Clerks: Still White, Still Male.” PrawsBlawg has this post on unanimity at the Court. On this C-SPAN page, you can access the video of Justice Roberts’ commencement speech at Georgetown University Law Center.
Yale law professor Paul Gewirtz has provided “a preliminary sketch of [Justice Stephen] Breyer’s distinctive place in American law today” in an article in The Yale Law Journal, “The Pragmatic Passion of Stephen Breyer.” The full PDF version is available at this link.
The SG today filed an invitation brief today recommending that cert. be granted in No. 05-381, Weyerhaeuser Co. v. Ross-Simmons Hardwood Lumber Co., which deals with what a plaintiff alleging predatory bidding must prove.
Here is Sentencing Law & Policy on the Supreme Court criminal cases from this term that have not yet been decided. Here is ACSBlog on Brigham City, Utah v. Stuart.
UPDATE 3:40 p.m. President Bush on Thursday ordered that the documents seized in the search of a sitting congressman’s office be sealed for 45 days. No one involved in the investigation, he said, would have accesss to the materials.
The Solicitor General has filed another invitation brief, this time recommending that cert. be granted, in No. 04-1350, KSR International v. Teleflex, which deals with patent obviousness.
(NOTE: The following brief post is provided for readers of the blog as an invitation to offer comments on the issues that it may suggest. The hope is to stimulate a serious but lively exchange.) UPDATE 5:00 p.m.
UPDATED 11:40 a.m. The Supreme Court on Monday issued an orders list showing no new cases were granted review. Among the cases denied review was an attempt to test the constitutionality of the three-drug procedure that most states and the federal government use to carry out executions by lethal injection.
UPDATED 4:30 p.m.. The Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Monday that police without a warrant may enter a home if they have reason to believe an occupant has been seriously injured or is threatened “imminently” with such injury. This was the only decision of the day on an argued case.
The Supreme Court again Monday took no action on two appeals by news reporters seeking recognition of a “reporter’s privilege” that would shield their confidential sources from forced disclosure in a civil lawsuit.
I noted on Thursday (here) that the SG had recently filed four invitation briefs.
Law enforcement officers, like Supreme Court Justices, are more akin to baseball umpires than to hockey referees. So says the Chief Justice, anyway, who seems to have an affinity for sports similes.
Here is an LA Times editorial titled, “Gitmo, get gone: Running out of excuses for not removing a national blight.” The Volokh Conspiracy has this post titled, “Roberts Seeks Consensus.” In Legal Times, Tony Mauro has this article on Justice Scalia’s opposition to Congress taking up the issue of the use of international law in constitutional interpretation.
The Supreme Court website has made available the transcripts of several recent speeches by Justice Ginsburg. Here is the latest, on the “Renaissance of Idealism in the Legal Profession.”
Bradford Berenson has this review of a new book by George Liebmann, The Common Law Tradition. The book provides portraits of five law professors who taught at the University of Chicago during the 1960s: Edward Levi (who later served as Attorney General), Harry Kalven, Karl Llewellyn, Philip Kurland, and Kenneth Culp Davis.
University of Oklahoma law professor Joseph T. Thai, a former law clerk to Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, has written a compelling article in the Virginia Law Review on Stevens and his work on the war on terrorism decision in 2004 and on a predecessor case during World War II when Stevens himself was a law clerk.
Note: The following analysis of the Court’s decision in Sereboff was written by Charles Stewart, of Akin Gump’s DC office, and Robin Schachter, of Akin Gump’s LA office.
A new blog, called Rapanos Blog, has been set-up to discuss Rapanos v. United States. The Volokh Conspiracy comments here. Concurring Opinions has this post titled, “The Price of Discrimination: After Fair v. Rumsfeld.” Concurring Opinions also has this post about lawyer sophistication in Supreme Court litigation.
The Supreme Court on Thursday announced plans for a memorial ceremony for the late Chief Justice, William H. Rehnquist. Attendance is by invitation.
Note: The following analysis of the Court’s opinion in S.D. Warren Co. was written by Charles Franklin and Paul Gutermann, both of Akin Gump’s DC office.
Following its usual practice of filing CVSG briefs in mid-May so that the Court can consider the cases before its summer recess, the Solicitor General has in the last week filed four invitation briefs, all of which have recommended that cert. be denied (and all of which are now available on the OSG website).
Yesterday Akin and Howe & Russell filed a cert. reply brief in U.S. Steel v. Helton, No. 05-1268, a case raising the question whether the Import-Export Clause of the Constitution prohibits a state from imposing a tax on goods while they are in export transit.
Earlier today, Kathleen Sullivan and Justin Nelson weighed in on the Court’s opinion in eBay v. MercExchange, which was handed down this morning. We also have these thoughts from Daniel Walfish, with Robbins, Russell, Englert, Orseck & Untereiner, which prepared one of the amicus briefs in support of MercExchange: I agree with most of what Justin wrote.
A Tennessee death row inmate, Sedley Alley, on Tuesday asked the Supreme Court to block his scheduled execution for 1 a.m. Wednesday, as he raised a challenge to the chemical protocol used in Tennessee for executions.
The Tennessean reports here that Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen has “reluctantly” granted a fifteen-day postponement of Sedley Alley’s execution, which was originally scheduled to take place tomorrow at 1 a.m. The Memphis Commercial Appeal reports further on the governor’s statement, here.
The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that a permanent injunction does not automatically follow a federal court finding that a patent has been infringed. Whether an injunction should issue is within the trial court’s discretion, the Court decided.
As we did last year, SCOTUSblog will be hosting a series of debates on some of the major cases of the Term as the opinions in those cases are issued. Today we will be kicking off the first debate, on the Court’s opinion in eBay v. Mercexchange.
Justin Nelson of Susman Godfrey, who filed an amicus brief on behalf of inventors and investors in the case, has these thoughts: My view of the opinion is quite different from Kathleen’s. The Court’s opinion in eBay v. MercExchange essentially affirmed the status quo.
UPDATE: The Supreme Court on Monday afternoon denied a request from a Maine group to speed up the Justices’ consideration of a constitutional challenge to federal limits on broadcast of a message opposing same-sex marriage during the month prior to Maine’s primary election for a U.S. Senate seat on June 13.
As noted below, a couple of weeks ago the Court directed the parties in No. 04-1131, Whitman v. DOT (the oldest post-argument case still pending) to file 15-page supplemental briefs “addressing the applicability of Darby v. Cisneros, 509 U.S. 137 (1993), to th[e] case.” (More from Lyle on the Whitman/Darby issue here.)
Here is Concurring Opinions with a post on how to get a Supreme Court clerkship. Here is TaxProf Blog on today’s decision holding that taxpayers lacked standing in DaimlerChrysler v. Cuno to challenge Ohio’s Investment Tax Credit. The Wall Street Journal Law Blog comments on the case here.
Lawyers for convicted terrorist conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui on Friday notified U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., that he will appeal to the Fourth Circuit Court — challenging both the judge’s refusal to allow him to withdraw his guilty plea, and the life-without-parole sentence he now faces.
A Maine group that is working to stop same-sex marriage appealed to the Supreme Court on Friday, asking for a prompt ruling on its right to broadcast advertisements about that issue during the federal primary election season in Maine, now underway.
The comparisons may change in coming weeks, but so far the Supreme Court has taken fewer cases for review in the new Term that opens Monday, Oct. 2 than in the recent past, statistics released this week show.
J. Michael Luttig, a judge on the Fourth Circuit Court in Richmond, Va., and one of the brightest conservative stars in the federal judiciary as well as a frequent contender for a Supreme Court nomination, resigned on Wednesday to become general counsel of Boeing Co., the airplane manufacturer.
Here is a post from the Volokh Conspiracy by Jonathan Adler on an upcoming talk he is giving on Kelo. ACSBlog has this post on a review by Judge Posner of Justice Breyer’s book, Active Liberty.
This is another in a continuing series of reports on the aftermath of Supreme Court decisions or orders.
Lawyers for Chinese nationals who have been held at the U.S. military prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have raised new questions about the status of nine captives, five of whom apparently have been sent to Albania where they reportedly have applied for asylum.
UPDATE: A federal judge in Alexandria, Va., moved swiftly Monday afternoon to deny a request by Zacarias Moussaoui to withdraw his guilty plea to terrorist conspiracy charges so he could have a new trial.
Election Law Blog has this post on the en banc Second Circuit decision holding that New York’s felon disenfranchisement law does not violate Section 2 of Voting Rights Act. The post discusses the potential for the issue to reach the Supreme Court.
This is another in a continuing series of reports on the aftermath of Supreme Court decisions and other actions. On April 17, the Court refused to review — in advance of Circuit Court consideration — the appeal of two Chinese nationals, members of a persecuted Muslim minority, who had been captured and were being held at the U.S. Navy prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
At the request of the Yale Law Journal, we are helping to circulate a call for submissions. We are advised that “there is no subject matter limitation for submissions, but the topic should be both contentious and suitable to thorough and engaging discussion.” The format is two articles that engage in a dialogue on a single legal topic, to be published in Spring 2007.
This is another in a continuing series of reports on interesting new appeals to the Supreme Court. At this stage, the blog takes no position on whether the Court is likely to review the case. These reports appear when the blog obtains an electronic copy of the filings.
Yesterday we filed this reply brief in No. 05-1036, Abdur’Rahman v. Bredesen. As my earlier post explained, the case challenges the constitutionality of Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol.
The people who bring you this blog are embarking on upgrades in the content, scope and technology of the blog. We will be making these changes in the coming weeks. Readers, regular or occasional, are invited to offer suggestions they would like to see in scotusblog.