Showing 1–50 of 156 items published in June 2018, most recent first.
Stephanos Bibas sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit. He clerked for Justice Anthony Kennedy during the October 1997 term. Twenty-six years ago, I was an eager summer intern in the middle of law school, working with a young lawyer named Greg Kennedy.
You can now download the final SCOTUSblog Stat Pack for October Term 2017 here.
Yesterday’s retirement announcement by Justice Anthony Kennedy dominates coverage of and commentary on the court. At NPR, Nina Totenberg examines the impact of the retirement, calling it “the end of the world as we know it, at least at the Supreme Court.” For The New York Times, Adam Liptak and Maggie Haberman report on the White House’s efforts to pave the way for this Supreme Court vacancy.
Justice Anthony Kennedy has announced his retirement. What now? We continue our series on Supreme Court vacancies, with Dan Epps and Leah Litman — both former Kennedy clerks — setting the stage. “Good Behaviour” is First Mondays’ series of episodes covering Supreme Court vacancies and nominations.
Richard M. Re is an assistant professor at UCLA School of Law. He served as a law clerk to Justice Kennedy during the October 2010 term. When I began law teaching, I asked Justice Anthony Kennedy for advice.
Leah Litman is an assistant professor of law at UC Irvine School of Law. She clerked for Justice Anthony Kennedy during the October 2011 term. Other justices are celebrated for hiring counter-clerks — clerks who are hired because they often disagree with a justice, not in spite of it.
Of all the names on President Donald Trump’s list of potential Supreme Court nominees, Don Willett’s may be the best known outside rarefied legal circles.
Daniel Hemel is an assistant professor of law at the University of Chicago Law School.
Theodore M. Shaw is the Julius L. Chambers Distinguished Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Civil Rights at the University of North Carolina School of Law at Chapel Hill.
Michael C. Dorf is Robert S. Stevens Professor of Law at Cornell Law School. He served as a law clerk to Justice Kennedy during the October 1991 term.
Alice O’Brien is general counsel for the National Education Association, which filed an amicus brief in support of the union in Janus v. AFSCME. The Supreme Court’s ruling in Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees is politics, not law.
Yesterday the court issued its two remaining decisions of the term, and Justice Anthony Kennedy, long viewed as a “swing” justice, announced that he will retire as of July 31. An early round-up of coverage of and commentary on the Kennedy retirement came from Jon Levitan for this blog.
Matthew Forys is the chief of staff at Landmark Legal Foundation, which filed an amicus brief in support of Mark Janus in Janus v. AFSCME. The Supreme Court upheld the free speech rights of state and local public-sector workers in Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees and overruled an anomaly in its First Amendment jurisprudence: 1977’s Abood v. Detroit Board of Education.
Harold Hongju Koh, formerly legal adviser to the U.S. State Department, is Sterling Professor of International Law and Co-Director of the Rule of Law Clinic at Yale Law School, which submitted an amicus brief on behalf of 52 former national security officials in support of respondents in Trump v. Hawaii.
[Editor’s Note: In this piece, Eric Citron takes a quick look at five areas of the law influenced by Justice Anthony Kennedy. We will have additional posts that take deeper dives into these and other topics.]
Sionaidh Douglas-Scott is the Anniversary Chair in Law at Queen Mary University of London and an honorary research fellow at Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford. It seems, and of course is, a long time ago that I first met Justice Anthony Kennedy in Salzburg, Austria, in July 1993.
James Coppess is the associate general counsel for the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, which filed an amicus brief in support of the union in Janus v. AFSCME.
James Ho may have been confirmed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit late last year, but today the Supreme Court ruled that a case that he filed before taking the bench, on behalf of a Kansas woman who alleged that police officers violated her civil rights when they tried to stop her from praying in her own apartment, can go forward.
Paul Smith is the vice president of Litigation and Strategy at the Campaign Legal Center. He successfully argued in Lawrence v. Texas for the Supreme Court to overrule Bowers v. Hardwick.
When then-candidate Donald Trump released his first two lists of potential Supreme Court nominees in May and September of 2016, the omission of Judge Brett Kavanaugh of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit drew comment.
We live-blogged to discuss Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement and the Supreme Court’s orders from its final conference of the term. Former Kennedy clerks Jeffrey Pojanowski and Michael Dorf joined us. […]
Jeffrey Pojanowski is professor of law at the University of Notre Dame Law School. He served as a law clerk to Justice Anthony Kennedy in the October 2005 term. The genre of law clerks writing about their former bosses is a fraught one, especially for academics.
John Eastman is the Henry Salvatori Professor of Law & Community Service at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law. He is also a senior fellow and director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence at the Claremont Institute, on whose behalf he filed an amicus curiae brief in support of the federal government’s position in Trump v. Hawaii.
Yesterday, in Trump v. Hawaii, the Supreme Court voted 5-4 to uphold President Donald Trump’s order restricting entry into the United States by nationals of seven countries, most of which have majority-Muslim populations.
Kristen Waggoner serves as senior vice president of the U.S. legal division with Alliance Defending Freedom, which submitted an amicus brief in support of neither party in Trump v. Hawaii.
[Editor’s Note: This post was updated with additional analysis at 1:56 p.m.] This morning the Supreme Court announced that government employees who are represented by a union but do not belong to that union cannot be required to pay a fee to cover the union’s costs to negotiate a contract that applies to all employees.
On the last possible decision day, the Supreme Court issued a 5-4 decision in Florida v. Georgia written by Justice Stephen Breyer and joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Kennedy, Ginsburg and Sotomayor. Justice Thomas filed a dissenting opinion, joined by Justices Alito, Kagan and Gorsuch.
[Editor’s Note: This post, originally published at 2:23 p.m., has been moved back to the top of the blog.] Justice Anthony Kennedy announced today that he would retire from the Supreme Court, effective July 31.
This morning the court issued a 5-4 opinion in Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, Council 31 , holding that requiring nonmembers of public-sector unions to pay fees to cover collective-bargaining activities violates the First Amendment.
Toby Heytens is the solicitor general of Virginia, which joined 19 other states and the District of Columbia in an amicus brief supporting the union in Janus v. American Federation of State County, and Municipal Employees, Council 31. [Note: The views stated herein are those of the author alone and are not attributable to the attorney general of Virginia or the commonwealth of Virginia.]
The justices have all released statements addressing the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy. We reproduce the full texts of those remarks below the jump:
Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement today, effective July 31, 2018. Amy Howe covered the news for this blog; her coverage first appeared at Howe on the Court.
Karen R. Harned is the executive director of the NFIB Small Business Legal Center, which filed an amicus brief in support of Mark Janus in Janus v. AFSCME.
It’s the last day the justices will take the bench for this term, with just two decisions pending. When the term ends, the justices will be scattering in short order.
Aaron D. Lindstrom is the solicitor general of Michigan, which filed an amicus brief with 19 other states in support of Mark Janus in Janus v. AFSCME. Kathryn M. Dalzell, an assistant solicitor general, also contributed to this article.
We live-blogged as the Supreme Court released its final two opinions from October Term 2017, in Janus v. AFSCME and Florida v. Georgia. Dan Epps of First Mondays live-blogged as […]
The justices are expected to take the bench this morning for the second time this week to issue opinions in argued cases. After Monday’s two opinions, there are four cases left for them to decide; this post briefly summarizes those cases (in the order in which they were argued).
John Elwood provides his best guess about October Term 2017’s last relists. Every June, before the justices leave town, they have one last impromptu conference to consider – and usually dispose of – all the cases relisted after their last scheduled conference.
You can view the latest Stat Pack for October Term 2017 here. Our Stat Pack includes information about the cases remaining, the number of opinions authored by each justice, the rates of agreement among justices, the pace of grants for next term, and a number of other topics.
Yesterday the Supreme Court issued two more decisions, bringing the number of remaining cases down to four. Mark Walsh has a first-hand account of today’s opinion announcements for this blog.
On Wednesday, June 27 at 2 p.m. PDT in Phoenix, there will be a live recording of First Mondays, which will review the recent Supreme Court rulings. Joining hosts Dan Epps and Ian Samuel will be Judge Andrew D. Hurwitz of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit and Ruth McGregor, former Chief Justice of the Arizona Supreme Court.
[Editor’s Note: This post, originally published at 12:11 p.m., was expanded with additional analysis at 2:05 p.m.] The Supreme Court today handed a major victory to the Trump administration.
This morning the Supreme Court ruled in favor of crisis pregnancy centers – nonprofit groups that oppose abortion – in their challenge to a California law that was passed out of concern that the centers were holding themselves out as full-service reproductive health clinics and providing pregnant women with inaccurate or incomplete information about their options.
Heading upstairs to the courtroom this morning, we overhear a court employee telling some members of the public who will make it inside, “Welcome to today’s non-argument session.” Although the court officially refers to opinion days such as today as “non-argument sessions,” that description will be tested today by justices offering arguments and opinions on both sides of two key cases.
Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia is the Samuel Weiss Faculty Scholar and founding director of the Center for Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at Penn State Law. She co-authored an amicus brief for scholars of immigration law on the history of the Immigration and Nationality Act in support of Hawaii in Trump v. Hawaii.
This morning the court issued a 5-4 opinion in Trump v. Hawaii, which rejected a challenge to President Donald Trump’s September 2017 proclamation restricting entry into the United States by nationals of eight countries.
Thomas M. Fisher is the solicitor general of Indiana, which joined 14 other states and the governors of two states in an amicus brief supporting the administration in Trump v. Hawaii. [Note: The views stated herein are those of the author alone and are not attributable to the attorney general of Indiana or the state of Indiana.]
The Supreme Court this morning released its opinions in Trump v. Hawaii and National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra. Dan Epps and Leah Litman of First Mondays and […]
At CNN, Ariane de Vogue reports that as the justices take the bench this morning for what is likely the last Monday of the term, “[s]ix opinions remain, including on the travel ban, public sector unions and redistricting, and one looming question that could change the future direction of the court: Will there be a retirement?” Steven Mazie takes a quick look at the remaining cases for The Economist’s Espresso blog.
The justices are expected to take the bench again this morning to issue opinions in argued cases. After Friday’s four opinions, there are six cases left for them to decide; this post briefly summarizes those cases (in the order in which they were argued).