Showing 1–50 of 87 items published in July 2013, most recent first.
By statute, the Chief Justice of the United States has the power to fill positions in the judicial bureaucracy, as well as to appoint judges to specialized courts such as those created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
Seeking to speed up Supreme Court action on the legal status of the child known as “Baby Veronica,” lawyers for a South Carolina couple argued on Tuesday that the child’s father — a member of the Cherokee Nation — has put up repeated obstacles to the early resolution of the interstate legal fight over custody of the little girl.
Coverage of the Court yesterday focused on cases that may soon come before the Justices.
The current Court’s constitutional understanding and what it says about the Court’s power and when it should act.
In the wake of last Term’s decision in United States v. Windsor, in which the Court held that Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act was unconstitutional, a federal judge in Pennsylvania has ruled that the widow of a same-sex spouse is entitled to receive the benefits of her spouse’s retirement plan through a private employer.
Geoffrey Stone explains modes of constitutional interpretation.
UPDATED Friday 12:11 p.m. The constitutional issue of police authority to examine the contents of cellphones belonging to people they arrest has now reached the Supreme Court.
At this blog, Lyle Denniston reports on the most recent developments in last Term’s adoption case, Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl: the child’s biological father has asked Chief Justice John Roberts to stay a decision by the South Carolina Supreme Court, which last week ordered a family court in that state to finalize the child’s adoption quickly.
In this six-part series, Geoffrey Stone – the Edward H. Levi Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School – discusses his experience as a Supreme Court clerk for Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., during the October Term 1972 (which included Roe v. Wade and Frontiero v.
The Obama administration, in a sweeping assault on the state of Texas’s history on minorities’ right to vote, asked a federal court in San Antonio on Thursday to impose a ten-year mandate on the state to get official clearance in Washington before it could change any election law or procedure.
UPDATED Wednesday 6:19 p.m. The family-owned business involved in the Third Circuit case, Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp., has filed a petition seeking en banc review of its challenge to the contraception mandate.
UPDATED Monday 11:30 a.m.
Yesterday’s coverage of the Court included Mark Sherman’s interview with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg for the Associated Press.
Briefly: At this blog, Lyle Denniston reports on the most recent developments in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, in which the Court last Term returned the challenge to that school’s use of affirmative action in its undergraduate admissions process to the lower courts for a closer look: the university has sought to have the case returned to a district court, where it then will seek a dismissal.
Alan Morrison is the Lerner Family Associate Dean for Public Interest & Public Service at the George Washington University Law School, where he teaches civil procedure and other courses.
The Obama administration, seeking to salvage significant power to stop racial discrimination in voting even after a major defeat in the Supreme Court, will be asking federal courts to put the state of Texas under a continuing duty to get official permission in Washington for any changes it wants to make in its election laws or methods.
Michael A. Carrier is a Distinguished Professor at Rutgers Law School. In his blog post, Alan Morrison worries that the Supreme Court’s Actavis framework for analyzing “large and unjustified” brand payments to generics works better in theory than in reality.
In 2012, the Court held in M.B.Z. v. Clinton that the political question doctrine does not preclude courts from considering the constitutionality of a provision of the Foreign Relations Reauthorization Act which allows a U.S. citizen born in Jerusalem to ask to have his passport list “Israel” as his place of birth.
Moving to put an early end to “this emotionally charged case,” the South Carolina Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered into effect a decision awarding full legal custody of the child known as “Baby Veronica” to a couple in that state, rejecting further challenges by the child’s father in Oklahoma.
UPDATED Thursday 10:10 a.m. Lawyers for Abigail Noel Fisher, the young woman at the center of the University of Texas affirmative action case, argued in a filing Wednesday in the Fifth Circuit Court that the university can no longer challenge her right to pursue her challenge, saying that the Supreme Court already has rejected arguments against her right to sue.
Relying directly on the Supreme Court’s new decision on same-sex marriage, but expanding on it significantly, a federal judge in Cincinnati on Monday ordered state officials to recognize the unions of same-sex couples who were married in other states but live in Ohio.
Last month, in United States v. Windsor, the Court held that Section 3 of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman for purposes of over a thousand federal laws, is unconstitutional.
The Supreme Court on Monday released the list of cases to be argued during the first sitting of the next Term, opening on October 7. Two major cases are among those to be heard in that session: a new test of Congress’s power to regulate campaign donations, and a test of the power of a state’s voters to ban the use of race in college admissions.
UPDATED: The lawyer for the family involved in this case has said he will seek Supreme Court review.
For the second time in the past eight days, the California Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to order county clerks across the state to stop issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
Moving the nationwide legal dispute over birth-control health insurance coverage a significant step closer to the Supreme Court, a federal judge in Oklahoma City has ruled that two family-owned private businesses do not have to provide insurance for any contraceptive method that would end a pregnancy even at its earliest stages.
Briefly: On Friday, lawyers for California’s inmates urged the Court not to delay an order requiring the state to reduce dangerous overcrowding in its prisons; this mandate was the result of the Court’s 2011 decision in Brown v. Plata.
The dispute in an Oklahoma case over the contraception mandate in the new federal health care law would go directly to the Supreme Court, rather than go back to a federal appeals court, under an arrangement made by Justice Department lawyers late last week, according to lawyers involved in that case.
This morning the Court issued a routine summer order list that (among other things) disposed of four stay applications and denied petitions for rehearing in over fifty cases.
As Lyle has explained, the sponsors of Proposition 8 have filed a petition for a “writ of mandate” in the California Supreme Court, seeking to enjoin (at least) fifty-six of the fifty-eight California county clerks from issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
Arguing that state officials in California do not have the power to order county clerks to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, the clerk of San Diego County has asked the state supreme court to clarify the law and in the meantime to temporarily block clerks from licensing gays and lesbians to marry.
Conceding that the Supreme Court’s ruling last month nullifying a key part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act might sweep more widely, the Republican leaders of the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday gave up their legal defense of a federal law that has denied military or veterans’ benefits to legally married gay and lesbian service members.
Yesterday’s coverage of the Court focused on the repercussions of two of this Term’s highest-profile decisions.
The Obama administration’s argument that federal judges should not “second-guess” the government policy of using unmanned aerial drones overseas to kill suspected terrorists, even if they are U.S. citizens, drew a strong and sustained negative response Friday morning from a federal judge in Washington. “The question is: how far does your argument take you?
Arguing that state officials in California continue to defy court orders to reduce dangerous overcrowding in their prisons, and are vowing even further “intransigence,” lawyers for inmates urged the Supreme Court on Friday afternoon to refuse to relax existing mandates to act.
Yesterday’s coverage of the Court focused on the latest chapter in Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl, the dispute between the would-be adoptive parents and biological father of “Baby Veronica.” In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision holding that the federal Indian Child Welfare Act does not bar the
A key date — July 26 — has now been set for a test of the Obama administration’s view on a legal mechanism for continuing to protect minority voters against discrimination at the polls — including court review of new election laws before they go into effect.
Yesterday’s focus at this blog was National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning, in which the Court will consider a challenge to the constitutionality of the president’s recess appointments to the NLRB.
This week we are hosting an online symposium on National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning, in which the Court will consider the constitutionality of the president’s recess appointments to the NLRB. Lyle summarized the issues in the case last week in a “Made simple” post.
This week we are hosting an online symposium on National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning, in which the Court will consider the constitutionality of the president’s recess appointments to the NLRB. Lyle summarized the issues in the case last week in a “Made simple” post.
Using the authority that the Supreme Court gave it three weeks ago, South Carolina’s Supreme Court on Wednesday moved to put an end to a deeply emotional dispute over the custody of a child by ordering that she become a part of the family that fought to have her returned after eighteen months living with her father, a Cherokee Indian.
Yesterday’s coverage included further reports and commentary on the aftermath of the Court’s landmark same-sex marriage rulings.
This week we are hosting an online symposium on National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning, in which the Court will consider the constitutionality of the president’s recess appointments to the NLRB. Lyle summarized the issues in the case last week in a “Made simple” post.
This week we are hosting an online symposium on National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning, in which the Court will consider the constitutionality of the president’s recess appointments to the NLRB. Lyle summarized the issues in the case last week in a “Made simple” post.
This week we are hosting an online symposium on National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning, in which the Court will consider the constitutionality of the president’s recess appointments to the NLRB. Lyle summarized the issues in the case last week in a “Made simple” post.
Newspapers are reporting that, as part of a tentative deal to preserve existing Senate filibuster rules, Senate Republicans have agreed to allow a vote on nominees to be the first director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and to the National Labor Relations Board.
This week we will be hosting an online symposium on National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning, in which the Court will be considering the constitutionality of the president’s recess appointments to the NLRB.
This weekend’s coverage of the Court featured (among other things) further commentary on some of last Term’s high-profile decisions. Two commentators focused on the Court’s decision in Shelby County v. Holder, in which the Justices held that Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional and can no longer be used to determine which jurisdictions must comply with the Act’s preclearance requirement.
This week we are hosting an online symposium on National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning, in which the Court will consider the constitutionality of the president’s recess appointments to the NLRB. Lyle summarized the issues in the case last week in a “Made simple” post.
UPDATED 4:42 p.m. The California Supreme Court on Monday afternoon refused to order county clerks throughout the state to stop issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.