Showing 1–50 of 119 items published in October 2011, most recent first.
UPDATE: In the wake of the Court’s orders denying certiorari, Greg Stohr of Bloomberg has articles on three cases: Stewart & Jasper Orchards v. Salazar (the Endangered Species Act), Barr Laboratories v. Cancer Research Technology (patent coverage of generic drugs), and Stryker v. Bausch (patient lawsuits against medical-device makers).
For almost five full years, the Supreme Court has been troubled by a Ninth Circuit Court ruling choosing up sides between medical analysts over how a seven-week-old boy died in Van Nuys, Calif., 15 years ago.
Analysis In recent years, five of the Supreme Court Justices have been highly critical of how the Court decides the constitutionality of public displays of religious symbols or messages.
Transcripts from today’s arguments in Lafler v. Cooper and Missouri v. Frye can be found here and here.
On Monday, the Court summarily reversed the decision of the Ninth Circuit in Cavazos v. Smith. The Court also issued orders from its October 28 Conference. There are no new grants and no new CVSGs. The November sitting also begins on Monday.
At 10 a.m. next Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear one hour of oral argument on a case seeking clarification of when trial courts must exclude the testimony of an eyewitness to a crime because the testimony was unreliable.
On October 28, the Court will consider such issues as the constitutionality of highway crosses, Miranda‘s “in custody” requirement, and the availability of disparate impact claims under the Fair Housing Act.
Promoting his new memoir, retired Justice John Paul Stevens continues to make news. In this morning’s USA Today, Joan Biskupic reports on her recent interview with the Justice, who rejected calls for changes in the Court’s practices on potential conflict of interests but did indicate that Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife “never should have failed to report her income” on financial disclosure forms.
Today in the Community we discuss Supreme Court clinics. In 2004, Stanford Law School created the first Supreme Court litigation clinic, allowing students to work with experienced Supreme Court practitioners on actual cases before the Court.
The Court will kick off the November sitting with two cases addressing the ineffective assistance of counsel during the plea bargaining process.
At 11 a.m. next Tuesday, the Supreme Court will hold one hour of oral argument on a plea to create a new constitutional remedy against private employees who work for a federal government agency. The case is Minneci, et al., v. Pollard (docket 10-1104).
This is my second post on United States v. Jones, the case on GPS and the Fourth Amendment. My first post was here. In this post, I want to explore whether the act of installing the device should count as a Fourth Amendment search or seizure.
Today in the Community the topic for discussion is arbitration – more specifically, the Supreme Court’s arbitration jurisprudence. It is of course well known that the Court – sometimes by a wide majority, and other times more narrowly – has repeatedly adhered to the position that arbitration agreements are enforceable in a wide variety of contexts.
As Lyle Denniston reported yesterday for this blog, five petitions involving challenges to various aspects of the Affordable Care Act were distributed for the Justices’ November 10 Conference.
Grand juries are proverbially known for two things – utmost secrecy and a malleability that allows a savvy prosecutor to indict a ham sandwich. In Rehberg v. Paulk, the Supreme Court’s decision may well turn on which of these famed grand jury traits carries the day.
Today in the Community we are discussing Arizona v. United States, in which Arizona is asking the Court to review the Ninth Circuit’s decision barring it from enforcing several provisions of its controversial immigration law, S.B. 1070, on the ground that they are preempted by federal immigration law.
Yesterday’s news largely focused on cases that are already on the Court’s docket for this Term. For this blog’s Academic round-up, Amanda Frost examines some of the academic commentary on the Fourth Amendment’s applicability to GPS surveillance, an issue the Court will take up in United States v. Jones.
The Supreme Court will take its first look at the challenges to the new federal health care law at its Conference on Thursday, November 10. Five of the six pending petitions (the sixth is not ready yet) were distributed to the Justices’ chambers on Wednesday, for consideration at that private session.
Giovanna Shay is an Associate Professor of Law at Western New England University School of Law. Professor Shay writes and teaches about criminal law and postconviction rights.
Analysis As many as two dozen states have now joined — or soon will — in the effort to crack down on undocumented aliens living within their borders, and they regularly seek to justify their efforts by arguing that the federal government is shirking its duty to enforce its own laws against illegal
On November 8, the Court will hear argument in United States v. Jones, which asks whether the government’s use of a GPS device to track the movements of a car constitutes a “search and seizure” under the Fourth Amendment. The subject is one that has long intrigued academics.
The Community discussion topic for today is M.B.Z. v. Clinton, in which the Court will consider the intersection of the political question doctrine and separation of powers in a contentious area of foreign policy.
With the Court’s November sitting scheduled to start in less than a week, previews of upcoming cases continue to roll in. At CATO@Liberty, Julian Sanchez responds to Orin Kerr’s preview of United States v. Jones, in which the Court will decide whether the installation and/or use of a GPS device on a suspect’s car violates the Fourth Amendment.
A California labor union local has asked the Supreme Court to put an end to a significant case on the fees that non-union workers must pay to unions representing them — a case the Court had agreed last June to hear, but has not yet scheduled for argument.
Coverage of the challenges to the Affordable Care Act continues to dominate the news. As Lyle Denniston reported for this blog, the Court has reacted to intense interest by creating a special page for all ACA-related filings.
Today in the Community we are discussing United States v. Jones, one of the most anticipated cases of this Term. In Jones, the Court will consider whether the government violated the Fourth Amendment when it attached a GPS tracking device to an individual’s vehicle without his permission or a warrant and then used the device to monitor his movements.
Sometimes, it seems, a case may confound the Supreme Court: should it grant certiorari to hear oral argument and decide the question presented by the case, should it deny review even though the case presents important questions, should it rule summarily, without hearing oral arguments, or should it instead hold the case for a related one?
On Friday, October 28 the Justices will meet for a private Conference. Our list of “Petitions To Watch” will be available soon. The Justices are not scheduled to hear oral arguments again until the November sitting begins on October 31.
John Elwood reviews Monday’s relisted and held cases. I mentioned at the end of last week’s relist (and hold) watch that my next post would likely be delayed because of a (still ongoing) trial in Madison, Wisconsin.
On November 8th, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in United States v. Jones, the case on whether installation and/or use of a GPS device on a suspect’s car to record the public places the car travels is a Fourth Amendment search or seizure.
Yesterday’s coverage of the Court continues the focus on recent developments in the challenge to the Affordable Care Act. At the Wall Street Journal’s In Charge Blog, Angus Loten and Jess Bravin report on the decision by the National Federation of Independent Business to file its brief early, as well as the group’s hope that the Court will hear the case in March, rather than April.
Today in the Community we discuss cameras at the Supreme Court. Although the lower courts have experimented with televising their proceedings, and the practice is longstanding in some courts in other countries, the Court has thus far resisted suggestions that it should televise its own oral arguments.
The Supreme Court, reacting to the widespread interest in the new cases testing the constitutionality of the federal health care law, now provides a page on its website where all of the filings before the Court will appear. It can be found here.
Today’s Community discussion deals with the Supreme Court’s relationship to businesses. Conventional wisdom holds that the Supreme Court, and especially the Roberts Court, has been sympathetic to business interests. But is this actually the case, and – if so – why?
Coverage of the Court continued to be relatively quiet yesterday. Retired Justice John Paul Stevens, who recently released his memoir Five Chiefs, sat for interviews with both Terry Gross of NPR‘s Fresh Air and Charlie Rose.
Today’s discussion in the Community concerns the use of eyewitness identification evidence in criminal cases and whether the Due Process Clause prohibits the use of all such evidence obtained in suggestive circumstances, or instead only the use of evidence obtained through suggestive circumstances orchestrated by the police.
Yesterday’s coverage of the Court largely focused on the cases in which the Court granted certiorari on Monday. In United States v. Alvarez, the Court will consider the constitutionality of the Stolen Valor Act, which makes it a federal crime to lie about having received military honors.
Analysis The lawyers have done their part to speed up the Supreme Court’s calendar on the major constitutional controversy over health care; that leaves it to the Justices to decide whether to do the same.
Asked by the Supreme Court for its views on the scope of a constitutional right to have a gun outside one’s home, the Obama Administration has tentatively suggested a standard that would mean that more restrictions on that right — but not really tight limits — would probably be upheld in court.
The Supreme Courts proportionality jurisprudence under the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause appears to be undergoing a kind of renaissance. Since 2002, the Court has held that the death penalty is an excessive (and therefore cruel and unusual) punishment for the mentally disabled, minors, and anyone convicted of a non-homicide offense against an individual.
The Court granted certiorari in four cases yesterday. Lyle Denniston of this blog (here and here) has two posts on yesterday’s order list, as do Robert Barnes of the Washington Post, Joan Biskupic of USA Today, and JURIST.
Today in the Community we are discussing suits in U.S. courts against corporations and political organizations for alleged human rights abuses abroad.
Ronald K.L. Collins is the Harold S. Shefelman scholar at the University of Washington School of Law. She covered the Supreme Court for nearly three decades for The New York Times. During that time she published some 2,800 articles for the Times and covered twenty-nine Terms of the Court.
Starting this week, SCOTUSblog will periodically highlight prominent new law review articles that focus on areas of practice related to the Court. Our aim is to identify recent articles that may be of interest to readers (roughly one per week) and to post summary descriptions of these articles as provided by their authors.
As the Court begins a two-week break from oral arguments, commentary continues apace on some of the cases argued during the October sitting.
FURTHER UPDATE: 4:38 p.m. The Supreme Court, stepping into a spreading international dispute over human rights violations, agreed on Monday to decide whether corporations or political organizations are immune to lawsuits in U.S. courts for overseas acts of torture, murder or other global law violations, under two American laws.
The Court granted four new cases today (details are below the jump). It did not call for the views of the Solicitor General in any new cases. The full order list is here. Lyle’s posts on the grants are here and here. Update: Greg Stohr of Bloomberg also has reactions to the order list here and here.
FINAL UPDATE: 12:29 p.m. With the Supreme Court newly active in deciding pleas to put some forms of free speech outside of the protection of the First Amendment, the Justices on Monday took on another such issue: the power of Congress to ban mere false statements, in a test case on the constitutionality of the so-called Stolen Valor Act of 2005.
Today in the Community we are discussing the Establishment Clause. The Court today relisted for the third time two petitions (here and here) involving a Utah program that posts crosses at the locations where highway patrol officers are killed.