The anti-choice strategy of using piecemeal abortion regulations that, taken together, substantially restrict access has been all too successful in many states. One reason for this is that, whatever their lack of policy merits, regulations like waiting periods and parental involvement requirements tend to be popular. Focusing on whether abortion should be legal is favorable terrain for supporters of reproductive rights, but focusing on specific regulations regrettably tends to favor opponents of reproductive freedom.
At the opening of each oral argument session, a Supreme Court clerk announces, “All those having business before this honorable Court draw nigh and you shall be heard.”But does the Court really listen?
United States v. Alvarez, which I wrote about yesterday, is fascinating in its complexity. The government in this case has asked the Court to hold that it can punish people who lie, regardless of whether they lie to extort money, win political office, or just to impress people at the corner tavern. The principle is breathtaking in its sweep. In the past, the Court has approved statutes that punish knowingly reckless false statements of fact—but only when those statements cause some measurable harm.
The Supreme Court comes back into session Tuesday. On that day, the Justices will earn their salaries (and then some) by considering the following questions:
The Ninth Circuit’s opinion in Perry v. Brown drew a letter to the Court suggesting the decision stemmed from “mold infestation” in court buildings. The correspondent is not the only person who hates the decision but has trouble explaining, in legal terms, why.
Last week, I argued that it was unlikely that many critics of President Obama's contraceptive coverage requirement would be mollified by a compromise that would allow a religious exemption but still mandate that employees be provided with contraceptive coverage at no extra cost. Apparently, we're about to find out if that’s the case. I was very concerned when I first read that Obama was planning to announce a "compromise," and part of me still wishes he had just stood firm given the that the arguments against the new regulation were so bad.
This week, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved a bill requiring TV access to Supreme Court arguments. Justice Sonia Sotomayor isn’t waiting: she made her debut on Sesame Street this week. Though she and Maria were just trying to enjoy “un cafecito,” they were interrupted by Baby Bear, who demanded a judgment in his case against Goldie Locks, who had (as the record has long reflected) broken his tiny chair during a most flagrant trespass quare clausum fregit.
Many progressive legal commentators, including Dahlia Lithwick and Garrett Epps, have praised Judge Stephen Reinhardt’s opinion holding that California’s Proposition 8—a referendum passed in 2008 making same-sex marriage illegal—is unconstitutional. The praise, however, has not been unanimous.
Stephen Reinhardt, a judge on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, has been called almost everything in the book. Conservatives slaver at the mention of his name; even liberals sometimes criticize his audacity. The Onion once ran a deadpan story reporting that he had “ruled the private celebration of Christmas unconstitutional ... ‘[i]n accordance with my activist agenda to secularize the nation.’”
The Supreme Court unanimously held Monday that the installation of a GPS device in a person's car constitutes a "search" under the Fourth Amendment (which prohibits "unreasonable searches and seizures”). This unanimity is somewhat misleading, however, as the Court split with respect to what theory of the Fourth Amendment should be applied going forward and left a crucial question unanswered.
In her report about the recent oral arguments in a Texas redistricting plan that was created by a panel of three federal judges, Dahlia Lithwick noted a compromise floated by Justice Kagan:
Clement and Garza seem almost to agree on a Kagan-suggested compromise whereby the lower court starts again with the new Texas map, but Texas bears a burden of proof to show that each district isn’t unconstitutional. Garza says that if it keeps the burden of proof on Texas it would be “far more preferable.” Clement seems to concede that it’s better than the court-drawn maps.
Just in case the Republican primary is not providing enough entertainment… here’s Stephen Colbert arguing with John Paul Stevens about Bush v Gore, Citizens United, and his greatest regrets (“this interview”).
The case of Corey Maples provides a disturbing look at the death penalty system in the United States and underscores how even people facing execution are often not represented by adequate counsel at any stage of the criminal process. In Maples’s case, the attorneys assigned to represent his appeals quit midway through the process, and yet the state of Alabama blamed Maples for his failure to comply with procedural requirements he had no way of fulfilling. Yesterday, the Supreme Court corrected this obvious mistake by ruling that Maples had a right to appeal in a 7-to-2 decision. But this case will leave the pervasive problem of bad legal representation in our criminal justice system essentially untouched.
Taking powerful new scientific evidence about the unreliability of eyewitness identification into account, last year the New Jersey Supreme Court established strict rules to determine when eyewitness identifications are unreliable enough to be inadmissible. In a case decided earlier this week, Perry v. New Hampshire, the Supreme Court had an opportunity to follow suit with a reconsideration of its own. Regrettably but not surprisingly, the Court instead decided to ignore the new evidence.
Combining a variety of conservative culture-war obsessions, Oklahoma voters in 2010 passed an initiative that would "forbid courts from looking at international law or Sharia Law when deciding cases." Today, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the initiative violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
Everyone agrees that the only way to fix the Gulf of Mexico dead zone—the largest off the United States—is to fix the Mississippi, but not everyone agrees how.
