Showing 1–50 of 86 items published in November 2015, most recent first.
One of the constitutional puzzles that never seems to get decided once and for all is how much sovereignty the states kept when they became part of the Union. One of the true hallmarks of a sovereign is that it cannot be sued without its consent.
Today is the first day of the December sitting, and the Court will hear oral arguments in two cases. The George Washington Law Review’s “On the Docket” previews all of the December cases.
The Supreme Court on Monday sought the federal government’s views on a plea by the Mexican parents of a fifteen-year-old boy who was killed by a U.S. border agent shooting across the boundary between the two countries.
The transcript in Musacchio v. United States is here; the transcript in Green v. Brennan is here.
The Court issued additional orders from the November 24 Conference on Monday. On Tuesday the Court released its opinion in OBB Personenverkehr AG v. Sachs. The Court also heard oral arguments on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. The hearing list for the December sitting is here.
In its Conference of December 4, 2015, the Court will consider petitions seeking review of issues such as whether disability payments are “earnings” and whether Texas’s standard for determining whether a capital defendant meets the definition of “intellectual disability” violates the Eighth Amendment.
The following is a series of questions posed by Ronald Collins on the occasion of the publication of Earl Warren and the Struggle for Justice (Lexington Books, 2015, pp. 360), by Wilmington College political science professor Paul Moke.
Showing some skepticism that an election now taking place in Hawaii is a purely private matter, Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy on Friday temporarily blocked the ballot-counting after all the votes are in on Monday.
Happy Thanksgiving to our readers! We’re grateful for you and all of the links that you send us. (Yes, I know it’s tomorrow, but we’ll be off tomorrow.)
Gobeille v. Liberty Mutual Insurance Company will never get the press scrutiny of King v. Burwell, but at heart it considers much the same policy question: to what extent does federal law facilitate the centralized management of health care?
The stakes are high as the Court’s December argument session brings yet another securities case. In an unusual twist, though, Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner, & Smith, Inc. v. Manning is neither a class action nor a federal case (at least initially).
Briefly: At Hamilton and Griffin on Rights, Susan-Mary Grant explains “Why I Wrote This Book”: her biography of Oliver Wendell Holmes, which she describes as “part of a series designed, in part, to ‘show the impact everyday people can have on the course of history,’ [and] was actually written to
Goldstein & Russell, P.C., is seeking to hire an associate attorney to join our four-lawyer Supreme Court and appellate litigation practice in Bethesda, Maryland.
On November 30, the Court will hear oral arguments in the case of Marvin Green, a former U.S. Postal Service employee. Green claims that he was the victim of racial discrimination, and that the Postal Service retaliated against him when he complained about that discrimination.
FURTHER UPDATE Wednesday 5:07 p.m. The state of Hawaii urged the Court not to block the final stages of the “native Hawaiian” election that is a prelude to forming a federally recognized community like an Indian tribe.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday released the schedule of oral arguments for the sitting that begins on Monday, January 11. The first case to be heard is one of the most significant of the Term: a test of whether non-union members in public jobs should be freed from paying any dues or fees to the union representing their workplace.
If ever a case called for pure and unfiltered judgments about fairness, it is Menominee Indian Tribe v. United States. The specific question before the Court is whether the statute of limitations of the Contract Disputes Act should have been equitably tolled to permit the tribe’s suit against the United States.
Pressing the Supreme Court to set a schedule for a ruling in the current Term on the new immigration policy, the Obama administration on Tuesday volunteered to give up some of its filing options and opposed a month-long delay for the reply of the twenty-six states challenging the policy.
Chief Justice John Roberts appeared in New York last week to discuss former Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes.
The fight in the Supreme Court over public employee unions and the First Amendment is expected to be one of the most divisive of the Term. That was true even before the state of Illinois weighed in on both sides of the case Call it a sideshow, or a play within the play.
Lawyers for the twenty-six states that challenged President Barack Obama’s broad policy to delay the deportation of millions of undocumented immigrants asked the Supreme Court on Monday to give them more time to answer the government’s appeal.
On Tuesday the Justices met for their November 24 Conference. The December sitting will begin on Monday, November 30. The hearing list for the December sitting is here.
In its Conference of November 24, 2015, the Court will consider petitions seeking review of issues such as whether restrictions on occupational speech are subject to First Amendment scrutiny, whether the federal Bankruptcy Code preempts Puerto Rico statutory law, and whether one city’s ban on “assault weapons” violates the Second Amendment.
A Washington, D.C., lawyer and former federal prosecutor said on Friday that he will file an “immediate appeal” to the Supreme Court in his long-running challenge to the National Security Agency’s massive telephone data sweeps program.
One year after President Barack Obama took historic steps to overhaul immigration policy, his lawyers on Friday appealed to the Supreme Court to uphold his plan and let it go into effect.
Briefly: At Education Week’s School Law Blog, Mark Walsh previews Monday’s installment of C-SPAN’s “Landmark Cases” series, which will focus on Brown v. Board of Education.
John Elwood reviews Monday’s relisted cases. It’s six o’clock on Thanksgiving. The Cowboys are down thirty at halftime. All of the fun people in your family have either fallen into food comas or left for some early Black Friday shopping (sidebar: is it still “Black Friday” when it starts on Thursday or even earlier?).
(Note: This is an image of Michael Musacchio provided by his attorney.) In recent years the Court has generally limited its criminal-side docket to “one issue” cases. But on the Monday after Thanksgiving, the Court will hear arguments in Musacchio v. United States on two different issues.
In the Harvard Law Review’s online forum, Laurence Tribe responds to Kenji Yoshino’s Comment on Obergefell v. Hodges (which Amanda Frost discussed in an academic highlight for this blog), arguing that the decision’s “chief jurisprudential achievement is to have tightly wound the double helix of Due
Chief Justice John Roberts says, “‘History didn’t end in 1965.’ But, what he misses is that voter suppression didn’t end in 1965, either . . . .
No one could deny that Obergefell v. Hodges was last Term’s blockbuster case. But there has been lots of debate about whether the decision is significant for more than just its momentous holding that same-sex marriage is a constitutionally protected right.
Commentary on Friday’s announcement that the Court will review a challenge to a Texas law imposing additional regulations on abortion clinics in that state continues.
Yesterday the Court issued additional orders from its November 13 Conference. Perhaps most notably, it denied a request by a New Hampshire anti-abortion group to review a ruling by the First Circuit that upheld the refusal of the Department of Health and Human Services to provide the group with access to documents submitted to the federal government by Planned Parenthood.
An Alabama woman who won adoption of her same-sex partner’s three children in a neighboring state and then lost them in her home state is asking the Supreme Court to enter a new phase of family law for gays and lesbians: their rights as parents.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered two sets of briefs by challengers for its review of the seven cases contesting the Affordable Care Act’s birth control mandate. Under the schedule, final filings are due March 11; oral argument is expected in one of the two final weeks of March.
On Friday afternoon, the Court announced that it will review a challenge to two provisions of a Texas law that requires doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at a local hospital and requires abortion clinics to have facilities equal to an ambulatory surgical center.
Over the dissent of two Justices, the Supreme Court refused to clarify a privacy clause in the Freedom of Information Act that protects commercial information that private organizations are required to share with the federal government.
The Court issued additional orders from its November 13 Conference on Monday morning, but it did not grant any new cases. (Last Friday the Court added two new cases, Whole Woman’s Health v. Cole and Wittman v. Personhuballah, to its docket for the Term.)
Oyez has posted audio and transcripts from this week’s oral arguments at the Supreme Court. The Court heard arguments this week in: Montanile v. Board of Trustees of the National Elevator Industry Health Benefit Plan Tyson Foods, Inc. v. Bouaphakeo Luis v. United States
Commentary on last week’s arguments in Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins continues. At Defining Ideas, Richard Epstein contends that the case illustrates “the importance of common law,” and he suggests that last week’s oral arguments in the case “revealed much confusion about common law principles.” And in The Economist, Steven Mazie concludes that the Justices “seemed divided about how to resolve” the case.
Eight years after its last major ruling on abortion rights, the Supreme Court on Friday afternoon agreed to decide the constitutionality of a 2013 Texas law imposing new rules for clinics and doctors. The earliest that the case would be heard is February.
In recent years, the Supreme Court has mostly stayed out of the decades-long battle over abortion rights. But today the Justices stepped back into the abortion wars in a big way.
Moving to defend its new immigration policy promptly in the Supreme Court, the Obama administration plans to file its appeal papers by the end of next week, it is understood.
This afternoon the Court granted review in Whole Woman’s Health v. Cole, involving the “undue burden” standard for state laws that restrict the availability of abortions.
Lawrence Hurley of Reuters reports on the Obama administration’s announcement that it will ask the Supreme Court to review a lower court ruling blocking an executive order on immigration; he observes that if the Justices agree to do so, “they would have to decide how much weight to give the court’s
It is a fairly vague hint, but the Supreme Court is showing some interest in a new case asking it to cast aside the basic dividing line long ago set for state power to prohibit abortions.
John Elwood reviews Monday’s relisted cases. Like television’s tutelary deity, we at Relist Watch cannot abide losers (even though, and perhaps because, the term is regularly lobbed in our direction). That’s why we begin every week by trumpeting the absolute winners.
The only argument this Monday was an Employee Retirement Income Security Act case, Montanile v Board of Trustees of the National Elevator Industry Health Benefit Plan. The case involves a commonplace fact situation.
In its Conference of November 13, 2015, the Court will consider petitions seeking review of issues such as whether Texas’s standard for determining if a capital defendant meets the definition of intellectual disability violates the Eighth Amendment, what type of analysis governs the
The Supreme Court on Tuesday named Eugene E. Siler, Jr., a senior judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, to serve as Special Master in the dispute between Mississippi, Tennessee, and Memphis over the right to pump water from an underground source claimed by Mississippi.