Showing 1–50 of 137 items published in June 2016, most recent first.
Today I am happy to present the final SCOTUSblog Stat Pack for October Term 2015. This year, the fifty-page Stat Pack includes information about, among other things, the rate of unanimity, the number of opinions written by each Justice, agreement among different Justices, and how opinions were distributed in each sitting.
Coverage of and commentary on the Court looks back at the Term that just ended. In Los Angeles Times, David Savage reports on the “alliance” between two Justices from California: Anthony Kennedy and Stephen Breyer.
With the close of the Supreme Court’s Term, Don Verrilli has concluded his tenure as Solicitor General. Verrilli has served as the government’s top lawyer at the Court since 2011, arguing a number of landmark cases there.
Misha Tseytlin is Solicitor General of the State of Wisconsin. In a symposium article for this blog posted in advance of the oral argument in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, I explained that for the abortion industry to win this case, the Supreme Court would have to adopt a more searching level of scrutiny for abortion regulations than it has for laws affecting other sorts of businesses.
More coverage relating to Monday’s ruling in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, in which the Court struck down two provisions of a Texas law regulating abortions, comes from NPR’s Nina Totenberg; David Crary of the Associated Press; and Emily Crockett, who reports for Vox on the decision’s effects on similar laws in other states.
This morning the Court issued its three final opinions in argued cases for the Term: Voisine v. United States, holding that a domestic-violence conviction is a misdemeanor crime of violence for purposes of limiting access to firearms; Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, holding that Texas’s
In a straightforward six-two decision in Voisine v. United States, the Court ruled on the last opinion day of the Term that Congress’s 1996 extension of a firearms prohibition to persons convicted of a “misdemeanor crime of domestic violence” includes “reckless” state misdemeanor offenses.
Hampton Dellinger is a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP. In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court retracted congressionally enacted floodgates meant to curb money in politics.
Jessica Pieklo is Vice President of Law and the Courts at Rewire. Nearly sixteen years to the day from the last Supreme Court ruling in support of abortion rights and it is Justice Stephen Breyer, again, leading the push back against state-level abortion restrictions.
Yesterday the Court issued decisions in three cases. In Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, it struck down two provisions of a Texas law regulating abortions.
Amid prospects that the Supreme Court will still be operating with one fewer Justice well into its next Term, the Justices on Tuesday added eight new cases for hearing and decision after the summer recess, with major controversies among the cases.
Pete Patterson and John Ohlendorf are attorneys at the Washington, D.C. law firm Cooper & Kirk, PLLC, which filed an amicus brief on behalf of the Republican Governors Public Policy Committee supporting Governor McDonnell. The views expressed here are their own.
Kevin C. Walsh is a Professor of Law at the University of Richmond School of Law. Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt began with the potential to be a big case in a big Term. It has ended as a doctrinally insignificant but ideologically ominous case in a transitional Term.
Jeffrey T. Green serves as National Co-Chair of the Amicus Committee of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL). Ivan J. Dominguez is the Director of Public Affairs & Communications at NACDL.
Erika Bachiochi is a Visiting Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a Research Fellow at the University of St. Thomas Law School. There is no question that the Supreme Court’s decision yesterday in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt is a win for abortion clinics and their doctors.
Fred Wertheimer is President of Democracy 21. The United States Constitution provides a “right of the people…to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” It does not say that a citizen can be charged a fee for exercising that right.
Tara Malloy is Deputy Executive Director of the Campaign Legal Center in Washington, D.C. Yesterday, the Supreme Court unanimously overturned the conviction of former Virginia governor Bob McDonnell on eleven counts of bribery-related charges, holding that his trial proceeded under an overly expansive reading of the “official act” element of the federal bribery statute.
As Lyle previewed in his lovely piece this weekend, the end of this Term is a turning point for SCOTUSblog. We say a fond goodbye to our longtime reporter Lyle Denniston, and we welcome our current editor Amy Howe into that role. Our access to the Court’s proceedings will be unaffected.
We live-blogged this morning as the Court issued orders. The transcript is available at this link.
Today the Justices are expected to convene to release rulings in the three cases remaining on their merits docket for the Term.
This morning at ten o’clock the Justices will take the bench for what we expect to be the last time before their summer recess. They have not yet ruled in three cases, which are summarized below the jump. Voisine v. United States (argued February 29, 2016).
Analysis Ruling broadly (but not finally) in favor of a convicted ex-governor’s legal argument, even while denouncing his personal behavior and that of his wife as “tawdry,” a unanimous Supreme Court on Monday made it much harder for federal prosecutors to prove charges of public corruption against elected officials.
Analysis Putting the right to abortion back on the same constitutional footing the Supreme Court laid down nearly a quarter-century ago, a divided Supreme Court on Monday swept away new forms of state restrictions on the way clinics can function.
Denise M. Burke is Vice President of Legal Affairs for Americans United for Life. Over the last three years, Texas has again been at the forefront of the continuing national debate over abortion.
Mary Ziegler is the Stearns Weaver Miller Professor at Florida State University College of Law and the author of After Roe: The Lost History of the Abortion Debate.
David Debold is Partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP in Washington, D.C. Americans who believe democracy works best when public officials understand and serve the needs of their constituents can celebrate the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision to throw out the conviction of former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell.
We’re down to the last day of the Term. Outside the Court building, loud demonstrators have taken to the sidewalk in anticipation of the abortion decision. But inside the courtroom, all is cool and even serene.
John Elwood reviews Monday’s relisted cases. Before clearing out of town for the summer recess, the Justices gathered for one final Conference today. Below are the relisted cases that they considered at that Conference. We’ll find out tomorrow at 9:30 a.m. whether any of these cases made the cut.
Michael C. Dorf is the Robert S. Stevens Professor of Law at Cornell University Law School; he blogs at Dorf on Law and is the co-author of the book Beating Hearts: Abortion & Animal Rights (2016).
David H. Gans is the Director of the Human Rights, Civil Rights & Citizenship Program at the Constitutional Accountability Center.
This morning the Court issued a five-to-three opinion in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, striking down as unconstitutional two provisions of a Texas law regulating abortions in that state. Lyle Denniston covered the ruling for this blog.
This morning the Court issued a unanimous decision in McDonnell v. United States, invalidating the federal corruption convictions of former Virginia governor Bob McDonnell.
Update (7:40 p.m.): Twitter has reactivated our @SCOTUSblog account and restored the deleted tweets. Today we had our annual running of the trolls — wherein we respond to people who direct mostly hateful and sometimes cute things to our @SCOTUSblog account, thinking it is the official Twitter account of the Supreme Court.
We live-blogged this morning as the Court issued orders and opinions. The transcript is available at this link.
Court watchers and lawyers from many walks of life waited many weeks for the Court’s decision in Dollar General Stores v. Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians.
Commentary So much of the rhythm of my life, and that of my family, has been dictated for more than a half-century by the Supreme Court’s calendar. And so it is with the completion this coming week of the Court’s most recent Term.
On Monday, the Court issued orders from its June 23 Conference. It added three cases to its merits docket for next Term. The Court also released its final opinions of the Term, in McDonnell v. United States, Voisine v. United States, and Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt.
Immigration lawyers, reeling from yesterday’s defeat in United States v. Texas, may today be finding some solace in Mathis v. United States, handed down at the same time.
Jonathan H. Adler is the inaugural Johan Verheij Memorial Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Business Law and Regulation at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law. His book, Business and the Roberts Court, is forthcoming this summer from Oxford University Press.
Zachary Price is an Associate Professor at UC Hastings College of the Law. The Supreme Court’s four-four affirmance in United States v. Texas may mean that the legal battle over immigration will go on.
Ernest A. Young holds the Alston & Bird Chair at Duke Law School. It’s safe to say that the Supreme Court’s one-line per curiam opinion today in United States v. Texas – “[t]he judgment is affirmed by an equally divided Court” – will not go down in history as one of the Court’s landmark opinions.
Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute. He filed briefs supporting the challenge to DAPA on behalf of Cato and others who generally support immigration reform. Like most immigrants, he does a job native-born Americans won’t: defending the Constitution.
Elizabeth Slattery is a legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies. Yesterday’s ruling in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin was disappointing, to say the least.
Richard D. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation, is author of The Remedy: Class, Race, and Affirmative Action, and the editor of The Future of Affirmative Action: New Paths to Higher Education Diversity after Fisher v. University of Texas.
Todd Henderson is Michael J. Marks Professor of Law & Mark Claster Mamolen Research Scholar at The University of Chicago Law School. When I joined the legal academy more than a decade ago, the topic of affirmative action in higher education was very much in the news.
John Paul Schnapper-Casteras is Special Counsel for Appellate and Supreme Court Advocacy at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund in Washington, D.C. He participated in an amicus brief on behalf of the Black Student Alliance at the University of Texas at Austin, the Black Ex-students of Texas, Inc., and the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund.
Elise C. Boddie is Professor of Law at Rutgers Law. The second installment of Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin is a sound win for diversity and Grutter v. Bollinger‘s legacy. It also may have quietly pushed the frontiers of the Court’s race jurisprudence in two ways.
Kimberly West-Faulcon is the author of amicus briefs in Fisher I and Fisher II. She teaches constitutional law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, where she holds the endowed James P. Bradley Chair in Constitutional Law.
This morning the Court issued three opinions in argued cases: Mathis v. United States, holding that the use of state convictions to impose enhanced federal sentences under the Armed Career Criminal Act depends on whether the elements of the state offense match a generic covered offense; Birchfield