Showing 1–50 of 80 items published in September 2012, most recent first.
On Monday, the Court did not grant any new cases. It did, however, call for the views of the Solicitor General in five cases, three of which are related. Lyle reported on those orders. The Court heard six oral arguments this week. On Friday, the Court meets for its October 5 Conference.
The Supreme Court at 11 a.m. on Monday will hold one hour of oral argument on how to define a “vessel” for purposes of moving a dispute over a floating structure into the special court that handles maritime commerce.
With the official start of the October Term 2012 just a few days away, much of yesterday’s coverage looked forward to the upcoming cases. Reuters (via the Chicago Tribune), NBC News, and The Atlantic preview several of the Term’s most anticipated cases, while the Heritage Foundation has also posted the video of its Term Preview event from earlier this week, which featured comments by Paul Clement and Tom Goldstein.
Howard M. Wasserman is a Professor of Law at FIU College of Law.
The Court will consider an archetypal problem of statutory interpretation next Tuesday when it hears oral argument in United States v. Bormes. The issue in this case is whether the United States can be held liable for money damages for a violation of the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
The Supreme Court opens its new Term at 10 a.m. on Monday, and starts with one hour of oral argument on the reach of a 1789 law that seeks to impose liability in U.S. courts on those who commit human rights violations in foreign countries.
Yesterday the Court released the hearing list for the October sitting, which begins on Monday. Lyle Denniston covered the release for this blog. The Term’s first oral argument will be the reargument in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum.
The Supreme Court is shrinking. Not the building or the number of Justices. No, the Court’s docket is declining, both the number of petitions filed and the number of cases decided. This is not a new phenomenon, but a pattern that may have started twenty-five years ago is continuing.
Following Monday’s “Long Conference,” yesterday the Court granted certiorari in six new cases and overturned a lower-court ruling on new election districts for West Virginia’s congressional representatives. The Court’s full order list can be found here.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday released the schedule of arguments, and listing counsel who will make the arguments, at the opening sitting that begins next Monday. The list is here.
As Kali Borkoski of this blog notes, the Justices met yesterday for their “Long Conference” to consider petitions from the summer lists.
The Supreme Court, preparing to open a new Term next Monday, on Tuesday granted review of six new cases and overturned a lower court ruling on new election districts for West Virginia’s representatives in Congress — a case left over from last Term.
Analysis Reinforcing its view that courts should try to stay mostly out of the way of politicians drawing new election districts, the Supreme Court on Tuesday — by an apparent unanimous vote — told lower-court judges not to insist on close-to-zero differences in the population of each of a state’s
Briefly: A news release from the Georgetown Supreme Court Institute summarizes the Institute’s annual press briefing (which occurred last week) on the upcoming Term.
On Monday, the Court granted six new cases and issued an unsigned ruling, with no noted dissents, in the West Virginia congressional redistricting case — Tennant v. Jefferson County Commission (11-1184).
UPDATE 12:45 pm. The new early release procedure will be followed on all days when a regular Order List is due to be released, and not just on days when the Court will be sitting.
Carl Cecere is an appellate attorney at Hankinson LLP. Lorianne Updike Toler is founding president of The Constitutional Sources Project (ConSource), founder of her own legal history and international constitutional consulting practice, and currently pursuing an SJD at The University of Pennsylvania Law School.
Although the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) is more successful than the average litigant at both the cert. and merit stages, its win rate does not prove that its status influences the Court’s decision making.
Briefly: JURIST and the Constitutional Law Prof Blog have additional coverage of the Court’s denial on Wednesday of an application to preclude Texas from using interim electoral maps in the upcoming November elections. (Cormac also covered this story in yesterday’s round-up.)
The following contribution to our same-sex marriage symposium comes from William N. Eskridge Jr., the John A. Garver Professor of Jurisprudence at the Yale Law School.
Briefly: The Court yesterday allowed Texas to proceed with interim electoral maps drawn by a three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court in San Antonio, rejecting a stay application filed by the League of United Latin American Citizens.
Justice Scalia continued to make headlines yesterday. The Associated Press (via The (Columbus, Ind.)
This contribution to our online symposium on same-sex marriages comes from Ruthann Robson, Professor of Law and University Distinguished Professor from the City University of New York School of Law. She teaches Constitutional Law as well as Sexuality and Law.
This essay for our symposium on same-sex marriage at the Supreme Court comes from William J. Olson and Herbert W. Titus, of William J. Olson, P.C. They filed an amicus brief on behalf of the Capitol Hill Prayer Alert Foundation et al., supporting a cert. petition in Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group
The following contribution to our same-sex marriage symposium comes from Dale Carpenter, Earl R. Larson Professor of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Law at the University of Minnesota.
The following contribution to our same-sex marriage symposium comes from William C. Duncan. Mr. Duncan is director of the Marriage Law Foundation and filed an amicus brief in support of cert. in Hollingsworth v. Perry.
The following contribution to our same-sex marriage symposium comes from Nelson Lund, the Patrick Henry Professor of Constitutional Law and the Second Amendment at George Mason University School of Law.
Coverage of several stories featured in yesterday’s round-up continues. Adam Liptak of The New York Times, Simon Lazarus at the Constitutional Accountability Center, Debra Cassens Weiss of the ABA Journal, Ilya Somin of the Volokh Conspiracy, and Jim Galloway of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Political Insider blog cover Justice Thomas’s recent remarks on the original meaning of the Constitution.
The following contribution to our same-sex marriage symposium comes from Steve Sanders, who teaches Constitutional Litigation, Sexuality and the Law, and Family Law at the University of Michigan Law School.
The following contribution to our same-sex marriage symposium comes from Andrew Koppelman, John Paul Stevens Professor of Law and Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University.
The following contribution to our same-sex marriage symposium comes from Robin Fretwell Wilson, Class of 1958 Law Alumni Professor of Law at Washington and Lee University School of Law and co-editor of Same-Sex Marriage and Religious Liberty: Emerging Conflicts, and Anthony Michael Kreis,
The Court recently released the argument calendar for its December sitting, which begins on November 26. The Justices will hear two oral arguments on three of the six days in the sitting; on each of the three remaining days they will hear only one oral argument.
Clearly we have touched a nerve. Among the more than seventy amicus briefs filed on behalf of UT-Austin in Fisher, the argument made by the Constitutional Accountability Center’s brief (signed by both of us, along with preeminent constitutional scholars including Jack Balkin, Bruce Ackerman, and Burt Neuborne) has sparked considerable commentary among conservative proponents of originalism.
With the official beginning of the 2012 Term just two weeks away, the weekend’s coverage of the Court focused on the Justices themselves.
My point was not that there is no difference between race-conscious affirmative action and any conceivable substitute – it is that there is likely to be little difference between race-conscious affirmative action and the race-neutral alternatives most universities will adopt if prohibited from considering race.
The following contribution to our same-sex marriage symposium comes from Jeff Mateer, General Counsel for the Liberty Institute, a nonprofit law firm, dedicated to defending and restoring religious liberty across America — in our schools, for our churches and throughout the public arena.
In the spring of 2003, the phone on Seth Waxman’s desk rang. “Will you accept a call from federal prison?” the caller asked. Waxman sighed. It might have been his fifth prisoner call that day.
Steve Sanders is a visiting assistant professor at the University of Michigan Law School and a former administrative staff member at Indiana University Bloomington. The views expressed here are his own.
Many observers expect the Court to take up one or more questions related to same-sex marriage this Term.
Briefly: The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News, and Associated Press have further coverage of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s oral argument earlier this week on the question whether the Court’s recent decision in Miller v. Alabama, holding that the Eighth Amendment prohibits mandatory life-without-parole sentences for juvenile homicide offenders, applies retroactively.
Briefly: Justice Thomas spoke yesterday at a National Archives event celebrating the 225th anniversary of the Constitution. The Associated Press (via The Washington Post) has coverage of his remarks.
The following contribution to our VRA symposium comes from Hans A. von Spakovsky, a Senior Legal Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a former Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the Justice Department, and coauthor of “Who’s Counting?
The following contribution to our VRA symposium comes from Adam Cox, Professor of Law at NYU School of Law, and Thomas Miles, Professor of Law and Walter Mandel Research Scholar at the University of Chicago Law School.
The following contribution to our VRA symposium comes from Guy-Uriel Charles, the founding director of the Duke Law Center on Law, Race and Politics and the Charles S. Rhyne Professor of Law at Duke Law. Voting rights law, policy, and jurisprudence are currently at a crossroads.
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 the Court will consider in the new Term that starts October 1. This is another in that series.
Briefly: Jessica Dye at Reuters reports that yesterday the U.S. Department of Justice asked the Court to consider two additional legal challenges to the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage for purposes of federal laws and programs as between a man and a woman.
Few issues have more deeply divided the Supreme Court in recent years than the meaning of the “Confrontation Clause” of the Sixth Amendment. At first glance, the Confrontation Clause does not seem very complicated.
The following contribution to our VRA symposium comes from Joshua P. Thompson, staff attorney with the Pacific Legal Foundation in Sacramento. He drafted PLF’s amicus brief in Shelby County v. Holder urging the Supreme Court to grant certiorari.
The following contribution to our Fisher symposium comes from Inimai Chettiar, the Director of the Justice Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. The Brennan Center filed an amicus brief in Fisher v. University of Texas along with the League of Women Voters.
The following contribution to our online VRA symposium comes from Richard H. Pildes, Sudler Family Professor of Constitutional Law, NYU School of Law.