Showing 1–50 of 52 items published in December 2005, most recent first.
The legal defense team for Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen designated an “enemy combatant” in the war on terrorism, on Friday afternoon urged the Supreme Court to order his release from a Navy jail, but not until it first considers his appeal at a private Conference on Jan. 13.
C-SPAN3 HISTORY – Supreme Court Confirmation Archives December 27-January 8 The confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito are scheduled to begin January 9th.
The Supreme Court is now scheduled to consider the appeal by terrorism suspect Jose Padilla at its Conference on Friday, Jan. 13. The distribution was reported Wednesday on the Court’s electronic docket.
On Balkinization law professor Sandy Levinson has this post on Alito and executive power. PrawfsBlawg has this post on the relationship between Padilla’s case and the companion case to Korematsu, Ex parte Endo.
Should an elected judge, who accepts large campaign donations, sit on a case that directly affects the financial or business interests of the donors and their associates?
The Bush Administration, protesting that the Fourth Circuit Court has engaged in an “unprecedented and unfounded assertion of judicial authority,” on Wednesday asked the Supreme Court to order the prompt transfer of terrorism suspect Jose Padilla out of military custody and into a regular federal prison.
Sentencing Law & Policy has this post discussing this New York Times article on Judge Alito and criminal justice issues from his tenure on the 3rd Circuit.
Attorneys for terrorism suspect Jose Padilla put before the Supreme Court Tuesday a full account of the shifting strategy of the Bush Administration in dealing with Padilla, seeking to persuade the Justices that the government is blatantly attempting to manipulate the courts to gain more power in the war on terrorism.
The legal defense team for Salim Ahmed Hamdan, concerned that the Bush Administration might try to scuttle his pending Supreme Court appeal challenging a trial before a war crimes tribunal, this week asked the Court to take steps to assure that the case goes to a final ruling.
The final congressional measure narrowing the legal rights of foreign nationals detained in the war on terrorism is a complex set of interrelated provisions.
In a deeply serious setback for the Bush Administration’s legal strategy for the war on terrorism, the Fourth Circuit Court on Wednesday afternoon kept intact its ruling in the now-celebrated Jose Padilla case, suggesting that the Administration may be trying to manipulate the judiciary by attempting to prevent Supreme Court review.
The New York Times has this article on the fact that, despite a Supreme Court holding prohibiting the execution of the mentally retarded, the Fifth Circuit has held that a Texas death row inmate who may be retarded cannot raise the issue in federal court because his lawyer missed a filing deadline.
The NACDL’s amicus brief supporting cert. in the Padilla case is available here.
In a remarkable public discussion over the past three days of one of the most closedly guarded, secret government programs, President Bush and his top aides have provided basically two legal arguments to justify his orders of electronic eavesdropping on Americans during the war on terrorism.
Here Concurring Opinions has a post proposing a new SCOTUSBlog – one operated by the court itself to generate input on the Court’s opinions before they are published. Here is Tony Mauro with an article about the Court’s annual “Christmas” Party.
Here is the abstract from an article by Richard Lazarus of Georgetown University Law Center on “Justice Scalia and the Faltering of the Property Rights Movement within the U.S. Supreme Court.” Here is Slate with an article about Medellin, the Mexican Supreme Court and cross-border justice.
Accusing the federal government of repeated attempts to evade court review of its handling of terrorism suspects and of engaging in “gamesmanship” with the courts, lawyers for Jose Padilla urged the Fourth Circuit on Friday to keep intact the ruling in his case in order to allow him to continue to pursue his appeal to the Supreme Court.
Here is the brief in opposition, with appendix.
The Bush Administration late Friday afternoon urged the Supreme Court to deny review of the challenge by Jose Padilla to his designation as an “enemy combatant” in the war on terrorism, arguing that the case is now moot. “The predicate for this habeas action…no longer exists” because Padilla has now been charged with crime in civilian court, and ordered released from military custody, the brief contended.
The Supreme Court on Thursday released the briefing and argument schedule for the four cases on the validity of Texas’ 2003 congressional redistricting plan (dockets 05-204. 05-254, 05-276 and 05-439).
Building on the success of prior auctions for WHR bobblehead dolls (which brought in more than $2000 each), we’ve put our own up for auction. The money isn’t for us. We will work with the winning bidder to find a worthy legal services organization to receive the money.
The website for the Federalist Society’s 2006 Student Symposium is up and running. This year’s event is focused on international law. According to the website: International law has dominated the Supreme Court’s docket in recent terms in two distinct, but related, forms.
There has been an active exchange in the comments regarding the Court’s failure to call for a response to the jurisdictional statements in the case before noting probable jurisdiction.
The Court will not be issuing any opinions (at least from argued cases) today. Orders List only. The next possible date for issuance of opinions in argued cases is Tuesday, January 10th.
The Supreme Court on Monday — in a surprise order — agreed to rule on the validity of Texas’ 2003 congressional redistricting plan, a measure that resulted in the ouster of five Democratic incumbents, and helped solidify Republican control of the U.S. House of Representatives.
The Supreme Court has tentatively settled on Wednesday, March 1, in an afternoon session, for the two-hour hearing on the four cases testing the validity of the 2003 Texas congressional redistricting plan, according to individuals informed of the Court’s planning.
Here is Rick Hasen’s extensive coverage on the Court’s decision to take the Texas redistricting case. Here is FindLaw’s link to the Memorandum and Opinion of the 3-Judge panel on the cases.
Here is Concurring Opinions with a post on the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA). RLUIPA is Congress’s second response to the Supreme Court’s decision in Employment Div. v. Smith.
On Monday, the Court will issue the final Orders List of 2005. Cases granted on that list will be argued in April. Of the 12 April argument slots, 3 have already been filled.
The Justice Department told the Fourth Circuit on Friday afternoon that it has no objection to wiping out that Court’s significant victory for presidential power, upholding the detention of a U.S. citizen captured within the U.S. as a terrorism suspect.
In a fashion that now seems typical of the war on terrorism cases involving foreign nationals being detained in Cuba by the U.S. military, the case of Salim Ahmed Hamdan has taken on new complications this week.
Here is Positive Liberty on backlash from Kelo. BizzyBlog comments here. Sentencing Law & Policy has posted this follow-up to previous entries on Alito and the death penalty.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday uphold the federal government’s use of a major legal weapon to help collect at least a part of the rising debt owed on college student loans.
Disclaimer: Darien Shanske participated in Stanford’s Supreme Court Litigation Clinic this semester; the Clinic worked on the briefs on behalf of the respondent. The Supreme Court yesterday heard argument in Domino’s Pizza, Inc., et al. v. John McDonald, No. 04-593.
The Supreme Court set out on Wednesday in search of a simple constitutional formula for assuring that jurors in death penalty cases have the option of simply turning away from such a sentence as an act of mercy.
can be found here, thanks to Oyez.
I thought I’d follow up briefly on Lyle’s blog post on the Chief Justice’s opinion in the Martin attorney’s fees case. The most notable thing to me was not the opinion itself, which certainly is very well done, but the way the Chief Justice delivered it.
Here, on a C-SPAN companion site, is an interview with Justice Breyer about the court and his new book. The Federal Public Defender has filed a cert petition in a case challenging the constitution of the DNA Backlog Elimination Act. The Third Circuit Blog has a post on it here.
The Supreme Court relisted the Hells Angels decision I previously noted here and here a remarkable seven times before denying cert. today without explanation.
The Supreme Court, in the only decision of the day, ruled on Tuesday that the state of Kansas did not act unconstitutionally in imposing a tax on distributors of gasoline that is later sold — and taxed — at service stations on an Indian reservation. The decision was 7-2.
Now on CSPAN radio and web (perhaps tv, too). They’re actually starting with Justice Thomas’s delivery of the opinion in Wagnon. Then, it’ll be on to motions for admission, and then the SG’s argument in FAIR.
Congress’ demand that law schools give military recruiters equal access to their students, despite the military’s policy of barring homosexuals from service, appeared to have survived quite easily its constitutional test in the Supreme Court on Tuesday, at least if oral argument reflects the Justices’ actual leanings.
On Tuesday, the Court will hear oral argument in Domino’s Pizza, Inc. et al. v. John McDonald, No. 04-593, a case involving the interpretation of 42 U.S.C. 1981.
The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to clarify the constitutional duty of states to allow evidence of insanity to be used as a defense in criminal cases. The new case tests two aspects of an Arizona criminal law adopted in 1993 to limit the insanity defense.
Few cases jumble together so many sensitive and controversial issues as Rumsfeld v. FAIR. The case touches on such topics as discrimination against homosexuals, military preparedness in the wake of September 11, the place of gays in the military, and the right to protest the government.
Disclaimer: The author worked on the briefs on behalf of petitioner Terry Whitman as a student in Stanford’s Supreme Court Litigation Clinic. If anyone sitting in today’s oral argument in Whitman v. Department of Transportation had familiarized themselves with the case through the parties’ certiorari briefs, they may well have wondered whether they had walked in on a different case.
Today’s oral argument in Collins v. Rice revolved around the question of what standard of review federal courts must apply to a determination of the facts by a state court in federal habeas corpus cases under 28 U.S.C. § 2254.
Here is Concurring Opinions on Judge Alito’s footnote 10. In a June 3, 1985, strategy memo to then Solicitor General Charles Fried on Thornburgh v. American College of Obstreticians Judge Alito wrote, in footnote 10: The case against Roe v. Wade has been fully and publicly made.
On Monday, December 5, the Court will hear oral argument in Whitman v. Department of Transportation, No. 04-1131.
In a follow-up to the Court’s decision last term in Miller-El, Rice v. Collins presents the issue of what standard of review federal courts must apply to a determination of the facts by a state court in federal habeas corpus cases under 28 U.S.C. § 2254.