Showing 1–50 of 60 items published in September 2016, most recent first.
How closely should courts scrutinize the purpose and effect of state legislation regulating abortion? Linda Greenhouse and Reva Siegel addressed that issue at length in an article published shortly before the Supreme Court struck down a Texas statute regulating abortion in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt.
Yesterday, the Supreme Court added eight cases to its docket for the upcoming term. Amy Howe covered the orders for this blog. Additional coverage comes from Matt Ford at The Atlantic and Lyle Denniston at Constitution Daily.
Coverage of the prospects for the new Supreme Court term that begins next week comes from Greg Stohr at Bloomberg, who previews the court’s “pared-down docket,” assesses the likelihood of court involvement in controversial areas such as transgender rights and immigration, and concludes that to “a
Today the court granted review in the following cases. Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District: What is the level of educational benefit that school districts must confer on children with disabilities to provide them with the free appropriate public education guaranteed by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
The official start to the Supreme Court’s new term will come on Monday, when the eight justices will convene for a non-argument session at 10 a.m. But the unofficial start came at 9:30 a.m. this morning, when the justices released an initial round of orders from their September 26 conference, which was the first conference to add new cases to their docket since late June.
It’s the 1980s all over again – shoulder pads, synthesizers, bomber jackets and insider trading. But in 2016, the defendant in the biggest insider trading case of the year isn’t a high-profile Wall Street denizen like Ivan Boesky or “junk bond king” Michael Milken: The main character in this story is a Chicago grocery wholesaler named Bassam Salman.
As the beginning of the October 2016 Term approaches, court-watchers are engaged in previewing some of the cases on the Supreme Court’s docket. At Bloomberg Law, Kevin McGowan reports that although there is “just one labor-related item among the 31 cases granted review” so far by the Supreme Court for the new term, several pending requests for review raise important employment law issues.
Sometimes one Question Presented can mask multiple issues. That seems to be the case with next Wednesday’s argument in Manuel v. City of Joliet, which is based on a federal Section 1983 claim filed by a man held in jail for 48 days on charges that the police allegedly knew to be false and that were later dismissed.
Even Duane Buck’s attorneys describe the facts of his crime as “horrific.” Buck believed that his former girlfriend, Debra Gardner, was in a romantic relationship with another man, Kenneth Butler. On July 30, 1995, he went to Gardner’s Houston home, where he shot and killed both Gardner and Butler.
Briefly: In The New Yorker, Jeffrey Toobin surveys the effect of Justice Antonin Scalia’s death on the cases decided at the end of last term and the implications for the court of a Trump or Clinton victory in November, concluding that the “hopes for a liberal Court will begin—or, just as certainly,
The justices of the Supreme Court normally return to the bench to hear the first oral arguments of the new term on the first Monday in October. But this year “First Monday” coincides with Rosh Hashanah, so oral arguments in the October Term 2016 won’t actually begin until Tuesday.
For CBS, Reena Flores and Major Garrett report that Donald Trump added ten names last Friday to his list of potential Supreme Court nominees, including Senator Mike Lee of Utah; they note that “specificity about potential Trump jurists” is “designed to solidify the conservative court-watchers,
On Monday, the justices met for their September 26 conference. They issued orders from this conference on Thursday. The court granted certiorari in nine cases, consolidating two. The October sitting will begin on October 3; the argument calendar for that sitting is available on the court’s website.
Briefly: At Law.com (subscription or registration required), Tony Mauro reports that after sending letters to all eight justices asking for details about their current health, he received a single response, from Chief Justice John Roberts, writing on behalf of the entire court, stating only that
The late Justice Antonin Scalia and the vacancy he left behind continued to loom large over the justices’ summer appearances, as his colleagues were often called upon to speak about his legacy, their memories of serving with him, and their thoughts on adjusting to an eight-member Supreme Court.
At his eponymous blog, Lyle Denniston reports that the Court, “acting with no sign of dissent, moved in on Wednesday to interrupt at least temporarily a series of lower court rulings that would bar employee benefit companies from claiming that they operate ‘church plans’ and thus are exempt from
It has been 221 days since Justice Antonin Scalia died suddenly and 190 days since President Barack Obama nominated Chief Judge Merrick Garland to fill the vacancy.
The new Supreme Court term presents an unusual opening focus on criminal cases: All five cases the first week of October, and all but one the next, have their nuclei in criminal prosecutions.
Briefly: In her eponymous blog, Amy Howe reports that the Virginia transgender student who identifies as a boy and wants to use the boys’ bathroom at his high school filed a brief last week opposing the school board’s cert. petition in the case, Gloucester County School Board v. G.G.; she notes
Do the Supreme Court’s constitutional cases turn on questions of law or fact? In Supreme Facts: The Prevalence and Justification of Social Facts in Landmark Decisions of the Supreme Court, political scientists Morgan Marietta and Tyler Farley examine that question.
PHILADELPHIA, September 19, 1794 — Your correspondent has traveled from the budding City of Washington in the Territory of Columbia to our nation’s capital here to cover a rare jury trial in the Supreme Court of the United States.
Yesterday, Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Stephen Breyer, and Justice Samuel Alito, along with several jurists from the United Kingdom visiting the United States as part of a legal exchange program, participated in a reenactment of a 1794 Supreme Court case, Georgia v. Brailsford, in the same Philadelphia courtroom in which the early Court once met.
The intersection between the Supreme Court and the upcoming elections continues to take center stage.
In June the Court struck down two provisions in a Texas law regulating abortions in that state. One required physicians who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at hospitals less than thirty miles from the abortion clinic, while the other required clinics to have facilities comparable to ambulatory surgical centers.
Orin S. Kerr is a Professor at George Washington University Law School, where he teaches criminal law and procedure. His scholarly work focuses on the Fourth Amendment and computer-related crimes. Justice Antonin Scalia was a strong opponent of the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule.
Akhil Reed Amar is Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale University.
Coverage of the Court again centered on the prospects for filling the vacancy caused by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. Ben Walsh and Ryan Grim reported yesterday in The Huffington Post that Donald Trump is seriously considering nominating venture capitalist and billionaire Peter Thiel to the Court should Trump win in November; representatives of both Trump and Thiel denied the report.
James Bopp, Jr., and Richard E. Coleson are attorneys with The Bopp Law Firm, PC. The topic is how Supreme Court jurisprudence on “reproductive rights” might change if a “conservative nominee” succeeds Justice Antonin Scalia.
Dawn Johnsen is Walter W. Foskett Professor of Law at Indiana University Maurer School of Law. The effect Justice Antonin Scalia’s eventual successor will have on women’s reproductive rights depends on the outcome of November’s presidential election – an election, of course, that also will determine any other Supreme Court vacancies.
Briefly: In The National Law Journal (subscription or registration required), Tony Mauro reports that “Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Wednesday chided law firms for not taking more steps to improve the balance between home and work for lawyers with young children.” Georgetown University Law Center’s Supreme Court Institute has released its preview of the Court’s argument docket for October Term 2016.
Eric Baxter is Senior Counsel at The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty in Washington, D.C. The Supreme Court has a long record of generously construing the Free Exercise Clause to accommodate religious practices regardless of their public popularity.
Yesterday, the Supreme Court rejected an attempt by Ohio Democrats to block an appeals court ruling upholding the state’s elimination of “Golden Week,” a window at the beginning of the early voting period in which Ohio residents could register and vote on the same day.
Marci Hamilton is the Fox Family Pavilion Distinguished Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of God vs. the Gavel: The Perils of Extreme Religious Liberty (which was nominated for a 2015 Pulitzer Prize) and Justice Denied: What America Must Do to Protect Its Children.
Briefly: In The Los Angeles Times, David Savage reports that when voting laws “are challenged in federal court, the outcome appears to turn on whether the judges or justices hearing the case were appointed by Republicans or Democrats.” In The Atlantic, Garrett Epps discusses next Term’s double
When early voting starts in Ohio next month, it will not include “Golden Week” – a window at the start of the early voting period in which voters can both register to vote and vote on the same day.
Erwin Chemerinsky is Dean and Distinguished Professor of Law, Raymond Pryke Professor of First Amendment Law, at University of California, Irvine School of Law. Without a doubt, the 2016 presidential election will determine the Supreme Court’s approach to the Establishment Clause for years to come.
Robert Destro is Professor of Law at The Catholic University of America’s Columbus School of Law in Washington, D.C. and a Distinguished Fellow at the Religious Freedom Center of the Newseum Institute.
Last week, the Supreme Court declined to intervene to block a lower court order barring Michigan’s attempt to eliminate straight-ticket voting. Amy Howe covered the decision for this blog.
Lawrence Rosenthal is a professor at Chapman University’s Dale E. Fowler School of Law. The late Justice Antonin Scalia was, famously, an originalist; he believed that the Constitution should be applied today as it would have been understood in the founding era.
Rory Little is the Joseph W. Cotchett Professor of Law at UC Hastings College of the Law. A binary “liberal-conservative” dichotomy simply does not fit when the criminal law jurisprudence of the late Justice Antonin Scalia is examined.
[UPDATE: On Monday, September 12, Ohio Democrats filed their reply to the state’s brief opposing their effort to block the Sixth Circuit’s ruling and reinstate “Golden Week.”] Emphasizing that Ohio actually offers its citizens a longer window in which to vote than most states, today state officials
Yesterday, prosecutors announced that they will not attempt to retry former Virginia governor Bob McDonnell and his wife Maureen on corruption charges after McDonnell’s convictions were overturned by the Supreme Court last June.
Ten days after the Supreme Court rejected North Carolina’s request to enforce the state’s new voter identification requirement for the November presidential elections, today the Justices also declined to step into a battle between Michigan and a group of non-profits and individuals challenging the
Jan Witold Baran is a partner at Wiley Rein LLP, where he heads the Election Law and Government Ethics Group. He has argued four Supreme Court cases and represented parties in several others.
Fred Wertheimer is President of Democracy 21, a nonpartisan organization that works to strengthen democracy and advocates campaign finance reforms. Our political system is pervasively corrupt due to our Supreme Court taking away campaign-contribution restrictions on the basis of the First Amendment.
In The Washington Post, Robert Barnes reports on Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s remarks before an audience of incoming law students, in which she stated that “senators refusing to vote on President Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court should recognize a president is elected for four years not three.
Less than three months after the Supreme Court unanimously struck down his conviction on federal corruption charges, today the Department of Justice announced that it would not seek to retry either former Virginia governor Bob McDonnell or his wife, Maureen, who was convicted on similar charges.
Scott Michelman is a senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington, D.C. He served as counsel for the plaintiffs in Tyson Foods v. Bouaphakeo.
Allyson N. Ho and Scott T. Schutte are partners at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP. What effect might a new conservative Justice have on the Court’s class-action jurisprudence?
The nomination of Judge Merrick Garland, and other issues surrounding the vacancy left by the death of Justice Scalia almost seven months ago, continue to dominate coverage of the Court.