Showing 1–50 of 72 items published in August 2012, most recent first.
Yesterday a three-judge U.S. District Court in Washington relied on Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act – the constitutionality of which the Court is likely to review in the upcoming Term – to bar Texas from enforcing its photo ID requirement for voters in this fall’s upcoming election.
The Supreme Court on Friday added two more cases for decision in the coming Term, one involving attempts to block federal court review of a class action lawsuit, the other involving the power of a federal court to correct flaws in a state prosecution for burglary.
The Obama Administration notified the Supreme Court Friday afternoon that it will shortly file two more requests — in cases from New England and New York — for the Justices to rule on the constitutionality of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).
UPDATE 8:30 p.m. After an afternoon hearing, the three-judge District Court in San Antonio ruled that the existing temporary maps for the congressional and legislative districts will be in place for the November election.
Editor’s note: During the Supreme Court’s summer recess, the blog is publishing a series of posts that explain, in non-legal terms, some of the most important cases that will be decided in the new Term that starts October 1. This is another in that series.
Tuesday’s decision by a three-judge U.S. District Court in Washington to deny preclearance for Texas’s new election maps continues to draw coverage. Greg Abbott, the Attorney General of Texas, has promised to appeal immediately to the Supreme Court, as Lyle reported for this blog yesterday.
Treating Texas’s photo ID requirement for voters as “the most stringent in the country,” a three-judge U.S. District Court in Washington on Thursday barred the state from enforcing it.
UPDATED Wednesday a.m. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott announced he will take “immediate steps” to appeal this decision to the Supreme Court.
All sides in a Supreme Court case over the fate of a Florida man’s floating home — now destroyed — urged the Justices on Tuesday to go ahead and decide the case.
As Lyle reported for this blog, yesterday a three-judge U.S. district court in Washington relied on Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act – the constitutionality of which the Court is expected to address in the upcoming Term – to deny clearance for Texas’s new election maps.
As the presidential election draws closer and the Republican National Convention begins, the media’s focus has returned to the Court’s decision in Citizens United v. FEC, in which the Court held that political spending by corporations and unions is a form of speech protected under the First Amendment.
Note to readers: All of the posts published as part of this symposium are here. Next week the blog will host an online symposium on Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, the challenge to the university’s undergraduate admissions policy.
This weekend’s coverage of the Court concentrated on developments in the constitutional challenge to California’s ban on same-sex marriage, Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, and a recent decision by the D.C. Circuit that creates a circuit split on whether the Food and Drug Administration can require tobacco companies to include graphic warnings about the dangers of smoking on cigarette packs.
Every June, the nine Justices finish their Term, often with a flurry of highly visible decisions, such as the five-to-four ruling upholding the Affordable Care Act on June 28.
The two high-profile lawyers who started the nation’s most significant lawsuit attempting to gain marriage rights for same-sex couples told the Supreme Court on Friday that it might find it very interesting to take up that issue now, but urged the Justices not to do so in the only case now at the
Briefly: The Advocate and JURIST have further coverage of the petition for certiorari filed in Pedersen v. Office of Personnel Management, a challenge to the provision of the Defense of Marriage Act that prevents married same-sex couples from receiving federal benefits.
In a 1966 interview with The Baltimore Sun, Thurgood Marshall (1908-1993) said he left Baltimore in the 1930s and was “glad to be rid of it forever.” Thirty-nine years after that interview, Maryland state lawmakers renamed the Baltimore-Washington International airport after Marshall.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday evening strongly hinted that one of last Term’s key rulings on the duties of criminal defense lawyers may get a prompt new look next Term, to see if it applies to death-penalty cases in Texas — the nation’s most active state in issuing and carrying out that ultimate sentence.
Yesterday the Court stayed the execution of a Texas death row inmate convicted of the murders of three teenagers in 1991.
From 1978 to 2008, Linda Greenhouse covered the Supreme Court for The New York Times, winning a Pulitzer Prize in 1998. In addition to teaching at Yale Law School, where is she is currently a senior research scholar, Linda also continues to write a bi-weekly column for the “Opinionator” blog of the Times.
Briefly: At the Washington Blade, Chris Johnson reports on the most recent petition for certiorari seeking review of the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act; the petition – which was filed by the group Gay & Lesbian Advocates and Defenders – argues that the Court should review this
Richard A. Epstein is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law, New York University School of Law, the Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow, The Hoover Institution, and the James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Senior Lecturer, the University of Chicago.
When the Court resumes oral arguments in October, the Justices – along with the rest of us – will face an annual challenge: how to pronounce the names of the parties in (just to name a few) cases like Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum, Kloeckner v. Solis, Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, and Florida v. Jardines.
A Boston-based gay rights advocacy firm on Wednesday filed its own case on same-sex marriage in the Supreme Court, the seventh such petition on the issue to reach the Justices during their summer recess.
A few weeks ago, Chief Justice Roberts issued an order staying the Maryland Court of Appeals’ ruling that the state’s DNA Collection Act violated the Fourth Amendment.
Briefly: Steve Eder of the Wall Street Journal Law Blog and Mark Hansen of the ABA Journal report on a recent survey which found that only one in three Americans can name a single Justice.
The Supreme Court Institute at Georgetown Law School will host its annual press briefing on Tuesday, September 18, 2012, from 9 to 11 a.m. More information is available on the Institute’s website.
Stephen I. Vladeck is Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Scholarship at American University Washington College of Law. He is a senior editor of the Journal of National Security Law & Policy.
Briefly: In an op-ed for the National Law Journal, Todd Peppers argues that, if a law clerk was responsible for this summer’s leaks about the Court’s internal deliberations on the health care decision, that law clerk would have violated the Court’s binding Code of Conduct for Law Clerks even if he or she did so at a Justice’s behest.
Sanford Levinson is the W. St. John Garwood and W. St. John Garwood Jr. Centennial Chair of Law at the University of Texas Law School and Professor of Government at the University of Texas at Austin.
Barry Friedman is the Jacob D. Fuchsberg Professor of Law at New York University School of Law. He is the author of The Will of the People: How Public Opinion Has Influenced the Supreme Court and Shaped the Meaning of the Constitution.
In a federal court hearing that fully disclosed the deepening level of distrust between the military officers who run the Navy’s prison at Guantanamo Bay, and the volunteer lawyers who represent the detainees there, the presiding judge reacted with obvious skepticism to the military’s new move to curb those lawyers’ activities there.
I’m involved with the Constitutional Sources Project, which is a non-partisan, non-profit organization devoted to research and discussion regarding original source materials related to the Constitution.
Coverage of the upcoming Term continues to focus on Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, in which the Court will consider the University of Texas’s use of race in its undergraduate admissions process.
Richard A. Epstein is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law, New York University School of Law, the Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow, The Hoover Institution, and the James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Senior Lecturer, the University of Chicago.
Sanford Jay Rosen graduated from Yale Law School in 1962. He has been a tenured law professor and a senior attorney at national civil rights organizations. He has been in private practice in San Francisco, California since 1976 and is the Senior Partner at Rosen Bien Galvan & Grunfeld LLP.
Coverage continues of the amicus briefs filed earlier this week in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, in which the court will consider the use of race as a factor in the University of Texas’ undergraduate admissions process.
Erwin Chemerinsky is Dean and Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of California, Irvine, School of Law.
Roger Pilon is vice president for legal affairs at the Cato Institute and the founder and director of Cato’s Center for Constitutional Studies. He holds Cato’s B. Kenneth Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies and is the founder and publisher of the Cato Supreme Court Review.
Today’s coverage of the Court focuses on the myriad amicus briefs filed earlier this week in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, in which the Court will examine the University of Texas’s use of race in its undergraduate admissions decisions.
Floyd Abrams is a partner at Cahill Gordon & Reindel. Yale University Press will publish his next book, which is entitled Friend of the Court: On the Front Lines with the First Amendment (2013).
Adam J. White is a lawyer at Boyden Gray & Associates in Washington, D.C. He often writes on legal and regulatory issues for The Weekly Standard, The Wall Street Journal, and other publications.
Yesterday the Court granted cert. in Chafin v. Chafin, which presents the question whether an appeal in a case under the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction becomes moot if the child involved has returned to her home country.
Louis Michael Seidman is the Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Constitutional Law at Georgetown University Law Center. He served as a law clerk for J. Skelly Wright of the D.C. Circuit and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.
A fascinating Supreme Court case on whether a houseboat tethered to shore, not able to navigate on its own, is nevertheless legally a “vessel” may now be moot since the structure has been destroyed.
Kathryn A. Watts is the Garvey Schubert Barer Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development at the University of Washington School of Law.
Briefly: Andrew Longstreth of Reuters covers a recent challenge to the federal Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which prohibits civil claims against gun makers and dealers for the “misuse of their products by others.” The Court has twice declined to consider challenges to the constitutionality of the law; another challenge is currently pending before the Alaska Supreme Court.
UPDATED 12:01 p.m., with the addition of a Plain English description at the end of the post. ———————— The Supreme Court on Monday added one new case to its decision docket for the new Term, a test of federal court power to resolve issues under the Hague Convention on abduction of children to a foreign country.
How much of a difference will it make to the Supreme Court whether Barack Obama or Mitt Romney wins the 2012 presidential election? This will depend, of course, on which, if any, of the current Justices step down in the next four years and on whether the president elected in 2012 is successful in filling those vacancies with the kind of nominee(s) he wants.