Publications
Greetings Court fans! Not much to report today: One case “resolution” and an order list. In Borden Ranch Partnership v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (01-1243), the Court issued a one-line per curiam affirming the Ninth Circuit’s decision by an equally divided Court. (Kennedy did not participate in this case; he must be feeling pretty […]
Greetings Court fans! One more cert grant from yesterday. (Oddly, the grant was tucked away on a miscellaneous order instead of placed on the regular orders list.) This case will be argued/decided next Term: Castro v. United States (02-6683): The Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA) imposes severe restrictions on the filing […]
Greetings Court fans! Three decisions today. Well, really, two decisions and one “resolution”: the Court issued decisions in United States v. Bean and Howsam v. Dean Witter Reynolds, Inc., and “digged” (dismissed as improvidently granted) Abdur’Rahman v. Bell. With these decisions, the Court has only four decisions left from its October sitting. In Howsam (01-800), […]
Greetings, Court fans! We have a guest author this week: former Wiggin and Dana attorney and current Fordham Law professor Christian Turner. As the only person at the firm who figured out how to print cases double-sided to save paper, we knew he was the person for the job given the two EPA decisions that […]
Hi everyone! One new decision today, but first, for those of you handicapping the odds for retirements from the Court his year, note that the Chief did not participate in argument yesterday. (I couldn’t find out whether he participated today.) Stevens announced from the bench that the Chief was absent because he was still recuperating […]
Hi everyone, and welcome back from a long weekend! Today, the Supreme Court added a string of new cases to its docket, including three cases that promise to add some excitement to the Court’s Term: the University of Michigan affirmative action cases, and a case reviewing Texas’ anti-sodomy statute. With these grants, the Court has […]
Greetings, Court fans! Just a short update for the week of Thanksgiving, as the Court issued an order list yesterday that consisted of two new cert grants. The Court really does seem intent on increasing its docket this term, though we’ll obviously have to see if the additional cases yield actual decisions on the […]
Good evening, and welcome to another edition of Supreme Court updates. An especially warm welcome to the new “subscribers” to Supreme Court updates. For the newcomers, these updates are intended to provide a fast and friendly guide to orders and opinions issued by the Supreme Court, and therefore allow you to keep up with the […]
Hi everyone and welcome to another edition of Supreme Court updates! No opinions today, but three new “grants” for the docket (a big day for the Solicitor General’s office), and some business from last week. First, and most significantly, in United States v. American Library Assn. (02-361), the Court noted probable jurisdiction to review the […]
Greetings, Court fans! The Court appears to be enjoying a serious honeymoon period. The percentage of unanimous opinions so far has been astonishing, and even those with a dissent or concurrence lack the strident language we’ve seen in Terms past. This may be good for the Court and the country in a time of transition, […]
Greetings, Court Fans! We’re back with the two decisions from Wednesday, which deal with the accrual of a cause of action for false arrest and the conversion of bankruptcy proceedings from Chapter 7 to Chapter 13 under the Bankruptcy Code. We’ll cover false arrest first. In Wallace v. Kato (05-1240), the Court ruled that a […]
Greetings, Court Fans! This week will be a big week at the Court. For starters, on Wednesday the Court will hear arguments in the biggest cases of the Term, Boumediene v. Bush (06-1195) and Al Odah v. United States (06-1196). The cases concern whether the Constitution guarantees alien detainees at Guantanamo the right to […]
Greetings, Court Fans, and welcome back for another Term of the Supreme Court Update! As hard as it is to believe, fall is upon us, and the Court is set to open the second Term of the Roberts era next week. As in past Terms, when the Court issues an order or opinion, we […]
Greetings, Court Fans! As promised, here is a follow-up to Tuesday’s update on the Court’s latest order list with the questions presented in Rompilla v. Beard, 04-5462. In that case, a Pennsylvania defendant received a death sentence after the prosecution argued that he was a violent recidivist who had killed someone only three months after […]
Greetings Court fans! This email should finish out all the opinions handed down in the last 2 weeks. The Court will sit tomorrow to hand down an order list (and possibly opinions), but that should be it for this coming week. Before turning to the opinions, the Court entered one order of interest Friday afternoon: […]
Greetings, Court fans! Today’s order list contains two items of note. First, in five cases led by Jackson v. Perry, 03-1931, the Court issued summary orders vacating a ruling by a three-judge panel of the Eastern District of Texas that upheld Texas’ new congressional redistricting plan. Texas gained two U.S. House seats after the […]
Greetings, Court fans! Before going on recess, the Court left us with one decision (an original jurisdiction case relevant to almost no one’s practice, but full of historical intrigue) and two cert grants. We don’t expect additional opinions until the week of the 14th, but we’ll keep you updated if anything surprising happens. The decision […]
Greetings Court fans! Before turning to the opinions, let me again thank you all for bearing with me as I catch up on the opinions issued over the last two weeks. Due to work demands (i.e., paying clients), I may be delayed in my output, but I will catch up. Once we get through the […]
Greetings Court fans! To follow up on the Justice-residence trivia from yesterday, I’m informed by reliable sources that both Stevens and Kennedy live in Virginia. (Although Stevens might be more accurately described as a Florida resident, when the Court is sitting, he’s in Virginia.) That gives Virginia a 5-1 residence advantage over Maryland. On to […]
Greetings, Court fans, and welcome back from what we hope was a restful Thanksgiving weekend! The Court issued one unanimous per curiam opinion today in Bradshaw v. Rickey (05-101), where it reversed the Sixth Circuit’s grant of habeas relief to Kenneth Rickey. An Ohio jury convicted Rickey of felony murder and sentenced him to […]
Greetings Court fans! With four new opinions today on top of yesterday’s five opinions, the Court is quickly clearing its docket. It could be, of course, that the Justices are racing to clear their plates in the hopes of getting a good assignment in the affirmative action cases. (If you still have several majority opinions […]
Greetings, Court Fans! After last week’s throttling of the Ninth Circuit, the Court decided to pick on somebody else today, reversing the Second and Eleventh Circuits. First, in Jackson v. Birmingham Board of Education (02-1672), a 5-4 majority held that Title IX, the statute prohibiting sex discrimination in federally-funded education (most notably in athletic departments), […]
Greetings, Court Fans! The Court has issued three opinions this week, including the first by the new Chief Justice. On Tuesday, in Wagnon v. Prairie Band Potowatomi Nation (04-631), the Court upheld a Kansas fuel tax against a tribal sovereignty challenge. Kansas imposes a tax on fuel distributors at the time they receive fuel from […]
Greetings Court fans! An order list today, but first, a quick follow-up on a “GVR” from last week’s order list. Often, when the Court grants a cert petition to review a particular question, there are other petitions pending that raise similar or identical questions. In those circumstances, if there is some possibility that the Court’s […]
Greetings, Court Fans! Today the Court officially opened the October 2006 Term, but oral arguments will not start until Tuesday. This week’s arguments will not exactly be scintillating, unless you’re a criminal practitioner or a statutory interpretation junkie. Tuesday brings Lopez v. Gonzalez and Toledo-Florez v. United States, which ask whether, if a state felony […]
Greetings Court fans! Thanks to all for your patience during my absence to take the Connecticut bar. (For those of you contemplating a move to a new state where you might have to take the bar again, FYI, the bar is still painful the second time around.) Once I get through the minor backlog caused […]
Greetings, Court Fans! The Court issued its first decision of the Term today (so much for Monday’s comment that it would be a while!). In our defense, today’s decision came as something of a surprise – it was a unanimous per curiam ruling undoing a temporary injunction and allowing new Arizona voter-fraud regulations to […]
Greetings, Court Fans! It’s getting down to crunch time – between last week and yesterday’s flurry of opinions we have nine outstanding summaries to give you, and the last four opinions will issue on Thursday. This Update will give you a very brief scorecard of what the Court has done so far, then launch into […]
Greetings Court fans! One new decision today (the first substantive decision from the December sitting), and a few other items of interest. Before I get to the decision, though, let me offer two minor “corrections”: First, in an earlier email, I suggested that the Court still needed approximately 3 or 4 cases to fill out […]
Greetings, Court fans! The Court continued its relatively blistering pace yesterday, unanimously holding that Congress can deny federal funding to universities that restrict military recruiting in opposition to the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy governing homosexuals in the armed services. As we head into a brief recess, that makes it 39 opinions so far […]