Showing 1–50 of 69 items published in May 2017, most recent first.
In its conference of June 1, 2017, the court will consider petitions involving issues such as whether a state violates the 14th Amendment by denying married same-sex couples the same right afforded to married opposite-sex couples under state law to have the name of the birth mother’s spouse entered
Yesterday the court added a case to its merits docket for next term, granting certiorari in Husted v. A. Phillip Randolph Institute, which asks whether Ohio’s process for removing voters from registration lists violates federal election laws. Amy Howe reports on the orders list for this blog.
At Constitution Daily, Lyle Denniston lays out the timeline and procedures by which the challenge to President Donald Trump’s executive order temporarily barring entry into the United States of foreign nationals from six majority-Muslim countries could make its way before the Supreme Court.
Three years ago, a unanimous Supreme Court threw out a lawsuit that sought to hold a German car company liable in California for the actions of its Argentinian subsidiary, which allegedly worked with security forces in Argentina during the country’s “Dirty War” to kidnap, torture and kill some of the subsidiary’s workers.
Today the Supreme Court added one new case to its docket for the fall, a challenge to Ohio’s efforts to keep its voter registration lists up to date. But for the 11th conference in a row, the justices did not act on a Colorado baker’s First Amendment challenge to the state’s public accommodations law.
Looking for a landmark ruling on patent exhaustion, the patent community got just that in the Supreme Court’s decision this morning in Impression Products, Inc. v Lexmark International, Inc. The court has been deciding a steady diet of patent cases for much of the last decade and has been rejecting
With the new Trump administration, immigration has been in the national news. President Donald Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions have emphasized that the U.S. government will target “criminal aliens” in its removals.
We live-blogged this morning as the court released orders and opinions. The transcript is available at this link.
The court issued orders from its May 25 conference on Tuesday. It granted certiorari in one new case and called for the views of the acting solicitor general in another. The court also released opinions in four argued cases on Tuesday.
The petitions of the day are: National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra 16-1140 Issue: Whether the free speech clause or the free exercise clause of the First Amendment prohibits California from compelling licensed pro-life centers to post information on how to obtain a
Rachael K. Hinkle is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University at Buffalo, SUNY. Morgan Hazelton is an Assistant Professor of Political Science and Law (by Courtesy) at St. Louis University.
Reid Wilson reports for The Hill that Cooper v. Harris, in which the justices upheld a lower court’s ruling that North Carolina relied too heavily on race in drawing the boundaries of two congressional districts, “is being hailed as a victory for voting rights advocates — though some caution that
John Elwood reviews Monday’s relists. The Supreme Court conducted an overdue spring cleaning this week, trimming half the relists from its rolls. But in the process, losers outnumbered winners bigly.
In response to requests from the Supreme Court, Acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall this week filed 10 briefs expressing the views of the United States.
At Governing, Alan Greenblatt discusses how the “‘efficiency gap,'” which “works by looking at how many votes for one party are wasted,” may provide “the missing piece for complainants” seeking to “statistically prove intent when it comes to partisan gerrymanders” like the one at issue in Gill v. Whitford, a pending cert petition the justices will consider at their June 8 conference.
[UPDATED at 10:12 a.m. on Friday, May 26, to include a press release by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who indicated that the Trump administration intends to ask the Supreme Court to step in.]
The court’s decision Monday in Cooper v. Harris, in which the justices upheld a lower court’s ruling that North Carolina relied too heavily on race in drawing the boundaries of two congressional districts, continues to draw attention, including from this blog, where a symposium on the court’s racial-gerrymandering cases this term has just concluded.
[UPDATED: Justice Elena Kagan has requested a response to the state’s application, due on Wednesday, June 7, by 11 a.m.] In March, the state of Wisconsin asked the Supreme Court to review a decision by a three-judge court striking down the redistricting map that the Republican-controlled legislature created after the 2010 census.
In its conference of May 25, 2017, the court will consider petitions involving issues such as whether a state violates the 14th Amendment by denying married same-sex couples the same right afforded to married opposite-sex couples under state law to have the name of the birth mother’s spouse entered
In Water Splash v. Menon, the Supreme Court resolved whether the Hague Service Convention –formally known as the Convention on the Service Abroad of Judicial and Extrajudicial Documents in Civil and Commercial Matters – prohibits or authorizes service by mail.
Where have I read this before: U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit – patent-holding plaintiffs win; Supreme Court – corporate defendants win.
Kimberly Hermann is General Counsel at Southeastern Legal Foundation. The government should not consider race when it is drawing electoral district lines – the lines should be drawn based on where people live, not based on the color of their skin.
Andrew Brasher is the solicitor general of Alabama. I think the most important aspect of Cooper v. Harris is not the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision on North Carolina’s Congressional District 1, but its divided decision on Congressional District 12.
Hans A. von Spakovsky is a Senior Legal Fellow and Manager of the Election Law Reform Initiative at The Heritage Foundation and former Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the U.S. Justice Department. Along with John Fund, he is the co-author of “Who’s Counting?
Anita Earls is the executive director of the Southern Coalition for Social Justice. She serves as counsel for the plaintiffs in two pending racial-gerrymandering cases, Dickson v. Rucho and Covington v. North Carolina, as well as a pending partisan-gerrymandering case, League of Women Voters v. Rucho.
Kristen Clarke is President and Executive Director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. Ezra Rosenberg is Co-Director of the Voting Rights Project of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.
Yesterday the court added one case to its docket for next term, granting certiorari in SAS Institute Inc. v. Lee, which involves “inter partes” review of patents before the Patent Trial and Appeals Board. Amy Howe covers yesterday’s order list for this blog.
NPR’s Weekend Edition features an interview with Rick Hasen in which Hasen discusses the court’s voting rights cases, including the justices’ decision last week not to review a lower court ruling that struck down North Carolina’s restrictive voting law.
Two North Carolina congressional districts, District 1 and District 12, have – as Justice Elena Kagan observed today – “quite the history before” the Supreme Court. In the last 25 years, the districts have been at the heart of four earlier racial gerrymandering cases at the court.
Richard H. Pildes is the Sudler Family Professor of Constitutional Law at NYU Law. In 2014, he argued predecessor case Alabama Democratic Conference v. Alabama on behalf of the appellants, and he continues to represent those plaintiffs.
Today the Supreme Court declined to wade into the battle over “soft money,” unregulated contributions to political parties.
We live-blogged this morning as the court released orders and opinions.The transcript is available at this link.
The court issued orders from its May 18 conference on Monday. It granted certiorari in one new case. The court also released opinions in three argued cases on Monday. On Thursday the justices met for their May 25 conference; our list of “petitions to watch” for that conference is available here.
Briefly: Constitution Daily notes that yesterday was the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s notorious decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, a ruling that “upheld the legality of racial segregation in America” and that has been relegated by legal experts and historians “to the ‘dustbin of history.'” The
Who doesn’t want to take a quick break in the middle of work and go to Italy? On April 21, Justice Stephen Breyer took part in a conversation called “Judges as Diplomats in Advancing the Rule of Law,” organized by the Luxembourg Forum at American University.
Justice Neil Gorsuch has cast his first consequential vote on the Supreme Court, denying a request for a stay of execution filed by several death-row inmates, and participated – actively, by many accounts – in the court’s April argument session.
Briefly: In The New York Times, Michael Wines reports that what “seemed like an important victory for voting rights advocates on Monday when the Supreme Court declined to reconsider an appellate decision striking down North Carolina’s restrictive voting law” may have simply “postponed a showdown
Briefly: At The World and Everything In It, Mary Reichard offers highlights from the oral arguments in Davila v. Davis, McWilliams v. Dunn, Sandoz Inc. v. Amgen Inc., and Henson v. Santander Consumer USA, Inc. [Disclosure: Goldstein & Russell, P.C., whose attorneys contribute to this blog in various capacities, is among the counsel to the petitioner in Henson.]
John Elwood reviews Monday’s relists. With all the crazy things happening now, it seems a little frivolous, even irresponsible, to be obsessing about the minutiae of the Supreme Court’s docket. So let’s get started. The ranks of the court’s relists are swelling.
In its conference of May 18, 2017, the court will consider petitions involving issues such as whether the petitioners are entitled to relief from the longstanding federal statute prohibiting felons from possessing firearms, 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), based on their as-applied Second Amendment claim
A sharply divided Supreme Court yesterday held that debt collectors do not violate the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act when they file in a bankruptcy proceeding a claim for a debt that has become uncollectible because the statute of limitations has expired.
Yesterday, the court declined to review a court of appeals decision holding that North Carolina’s 2013 voting law, which included a voter ID requirement and other restrictions on voting, was passed with racially discriminatory intent. Amy Howe covers yesterday’s orders list for this blog.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit heard oral argument yesterday in a challenge to the executive order signed by President Donald Trump on March 6.
Briefly: In The New York Times, Adam Liptak looks at Gill v. Whitford, a pending cert petition involving a constitutional challenge to “political gamesmanship in redistricting,” noting that the case may offer “‘the holy grail of election law jurisprudence'”: “‘a workable standard’ to decide when …
Today’s opinion in Howell v. Howell exemplifies the bread and butter of the Supreme Court’s docket: It is a decision with significant real-world consequences that will nonetheless largely fly under the radar.
For anybody who thought that the Supreme Court’s protective attitude toward arbitration agreements would differ in the absence of the late Justice Antonin Scalia, the decision this morning in Kindred Nursing Centers Limited Partnership v. Clark will come as a surprise.
The Supreme Court issued orders from last week’s private conference, and once again the big news was the court’s lack of action in some high-profile cases.
We live-blogged this morning as the court released orders and opinions. The transcript is available at this link.
The court issued orders from its May 11 conference on Monday. It called for the views of the acting solicitor general in two cases. The court also released opinions in three argued cases on Monday.
Briefly: In The National Law Journal (subscription or registration required), Erin Mulvaney reports that in their private conference yesterday, the justices considered a cert petition that “draws into question how much an outdoor workplace needs to consider the wildlife—in this case, bugs—and