Remember all the blog coverage (and not just here) about school officials’ strip search of a 13-year-old Arizona student in a “zero-tolerance” motivated quest for that dreaded scourge, Ibuprofen? I covered the original decision upholding the search here, noted the grant of rehearing here, and the en banc reversal here. Here’s the en banc opinion: Redding v. Safford USD #1, case no. 05-15759 (9th Cir. (en banc) July 11, 2008). SCOTUS granted cert Friday afternoon, so there is sure to be another burst of blog coverage about the case. If you want to get up to speed while saving yourself some clicks, go straight to this synopsis by newly minted…
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It’s Kennedy’s Court
So says UC Irvine School of Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky about the U. S. Supreme Court in his front-page piece in this month’s California Bar Journal. Simply put, on issues that are defined by ideology, the conservative position prevails in the Roberts Court except when Justice Kennedy joins with Justices Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer. Occasionally this term, Justice Stevens or Justice Breyer joined with the five most conservative justices to create a 6-3 or 7-2 vote for a conservative result. But never did one of the four most conservative justices — Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Scalia, Thomas and Alito — vote for a more liberal result in a…
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A Supreme Editor is Needed
Mister Thorne of the Set in Style blog likes to poke gentle fun at lawyers’ writing mistakes in order to remind us that we need editors as much as anyone, even though — in fact, because — we craft words for living. In this post, he links to a legal writing website that dissects eight grammatical errors in the recent SCOTUS gun rights case, D.C. v. Heller, and links to an ad soliciting an attorney editor for the California Supreme Court, placed in what I would have thought was a rather unconventional place, considering the job.
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Mistakes in Big SCOTUS Cases? (UPDATED)
Image via Wikipedia I ran across a couple of interesting posts claiming that various SCOTUS justices got the facts just plain wrong in at least three significant cases, including two very recent ones. Make of them — both the blog posts and the mistakes — what you will. CAAFlog, a military law blog, reports that both the majority and dissenting SCOTUS justices in Kennedy v. Louisiana, case no. 07-343 (June 25, 2008), were wrong in noting that the federal government had not made child rapists eligible for the death penalty. According to CAAFlog, the Uniform Code of Military Justice makes child rapists in the military eligible for the death penalty.…
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Boston Legal and the Supremes
Image via Wikipedia From Harmful Error: [Tuesday] night’s episode of Boston Legal included a fairly amazing, even if a tad bit on the fantasy end of the spectrum, speech to the US Supreme Court, before actors who look very much like the real justices. For more details and alink to the 10-minute clip on Youtube, see the post. If I run across any more blogs posting about the episode, I will link to them from this post. A while back, I told you about a lawyer who blogs about episodes of The Office, tallying up the liability incurred in each episode. Maybe someone — someone with a lot of time…
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The Supremes on Legal Writing
Interested in hearing — literally — what the Supreme Court Justices have to say about legal writing? You can watch video interviews of eight of the Justices, conducted by Bryan Garner in 2006-2007, at LawProse. H/T De Minimus.
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You’ve Heard of Doubting Thomas. Here’s Silent Thomas.
This AP article explores the curious silence of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. According to the article, Justice Thomas has not asked a question at oral argument in two years. I knew he was a man of few words that rarely asked questions . . . but two years? That’s stunning. He says he asks questions when he needs to. Which reminds me of the kid who wouldn’t talk. At age 2, his parents took him to the doctor, who could find nothing physically wrong with him. But at age 4, he still hadn’t said a word. To the doctor again. Again, nothing physically wrong. And so it went for…
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Inmate Earns SCOTUS Review with Pro Per Cert Petition
Legal Writing Prof Blog reports on federal inmate Keith Burgess’s recent successful pro per cert petition. The post includes links to press coverage and to the petition itself. It’s nice to see clear, compelling writing triumph, regardless of who presents it, especially in light of recent charges that the court tends to favor “superstar” attorneys with an established SCOTUS presence.
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SCOTUS on Stare Decisis
The Blog of Legal Times has a good summary of the discussion of stare decisis in Tuesday’s U. S. Supreme Court opinions in John R. Sand & Gravel Co. v. United States, case no. 06-1164 (Jan. 8, 2008), including what it sees as an unusual alignment of the justices. The catalyst for the discussion was whether a series of SCOTUS precedents dating back to the 1880s was effectively overruled by a 1990 SCOTUS decision. The competing opinions in John R. Sand & Gravel disagree on the impact of the 1990 decision, with the majority concluding that it did not overrule the earlier cases. I remember my legal writing professor emphasizing…
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Are SCOTUS Pros Hogging the Court?
WSJ.com Law Blog summarizes a Legal Times article highlighting a paper by Georgetown law professor Richard Lazarus, in which he posits that the U.S. Supreme Court tends to grant certiorari in cases involving “superstar” members of its bar. Since those superstars tend to represent business interests, Lazarus contends — according to the Legal Times — that they are “boxing out the civil rights, civil liberties and labor groups that once helped set the Court’s agenda.” Some of the commenters think Professor Lazarus is off base. UPDATE (10/24/07): Legal Profession Blog has the abstract of Professor Lazarus’s paper and a link to it on SSRN. UPDATE (10/26/07): If you want more…
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Rare Original Jurisdiction in SCOTUS Case
WSJ.com Law Blog reports on a current case rare for its forum: the U.S. Supreme Court. Not so odd, you say? This is a case where SCOTUS has original jurisdiction.
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Calabresi on SCOTUS under Roberts
Professor Steven Calabresi responds to a New York Times editorial with a letter to the editor: The Roberts Court: The Rule of Law, Not Ideology.
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SCOTUS Cert Pool Memos Available Online
Professor Lee Epstein at Northwestern University School of Law has posted a “Digital Archive of the Papers of Harry A. Blackmun.” Bloggers are most abuzz about the “cert pool memos” available as part of the archive. These memos provide insight into the reasons certiorari was granted or denied. For a good explanation of the cert pool memos, go to this page of the archive. I got the link from Prawfsblawg. Who got it from GWU Law Professor Orin Kerr at The Volokh Conspiracy (who gives some especially good reasons to peruse them). Who got it from How Appealing. Who got it from . . . aw, who knows?
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Online Supreme Court Resources
Th Ross-Blakley Law Library Blog has posted links to some Online Resources to Follow the Supreme Court. It’s not a bad set of links. But it neglects to mention SCOTUSblog and its new, super-cool feature, SCOTUSwiki. What’s a wiki, you ask? I posted this several months ago about the growth of legal wikis and the potential for court citations to wikis. A wiki with the stature of SCOTUSblog behind it makes that even more likely.
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Should SCOTUS Justices Disclose Reasons for Recusals?
This Washington Post editorial argues that they should. It first notes the justification for not disclosing reasons for recusals: Justices have traditionally declined to elaborate on why they’ve stepped aside. One reason: a legitimate concern that revealing the cause for a recusal could empower future litigants to manufacture conflicts — such as hiring the spouse or child of a justice as a lawyer on the case — to force the removal of a justice who appears philosophically hostile to their arguments. It then argues that the most recent recusals of Justice Roberts and Justice Breyer from a pending securities suit were likely due to their ownership of stock in the…
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So Your Child Wants to Be a Lawyer
If you’re determined to set your kid on the path to lawyering at an early age, you might consider The ABA Journal U.S. Supreme Court Coloring and Activity Book. That link leads to a description that includes this more-than-likely true statement: “It’s the first SCOTUS-centric publication to come with its own box of crayons.” The ABA post includes links for purchase and PDF downloads of sample pages featuring Sandra Day O’Connor and John Marshall.
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More on a Proposed End to Life Tenure for Supreme Court Justices
Back in July, I linked to this Law.com post on this topic. Now SCOTUSblog has a very detailed post called Life Tenure, Term Limits, and Supreme Court Justices, in which they critique both the proposals for ending life tenure and a study relied on in support of doing so. The post includes citations to more detailed articles, as well as a few links to other discussions of the topic, including a recent New York Times article.
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Availability of Electronically Filed Briefs in U. S. Supreme Court
SCOTUSBlog has information regarding the upcoming online availability of briefs filed electronically with the U.S. Supreme Court.
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Did You Learn about FDR’s “Court-Packing” Plan in Your Constitutional Law Class?
If so, you might want to dust off your notes, in case Marshall University Political Science Professor Jean Edward Smith shows any prescience in his New York Times Op-Ed piece, “Stacking the Court,” which I ran across via the Wall Street Journal Law Blog. Professor Smith gives a recitation of past changes in the authorized number of justices, with very brief detail on why some of them were made, and concludes: If the current five-man majority persists in thumbing its nose at popular values, the election of a Democratic president and Congress could provide a corrective. It requires only a majority vote in both houses to add a justice or…
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Claiborne Case Sparks Debate
In Claiborne v. U.S., case no. No. 06–5618 (June 4, 2007), the U.S. Supreme Court decided that the death of the petitioning criminal defendant rendered the case moot, and thus it vacated the judgment of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals that had reversed the district court’s downward adjustment from the federal sentencing guidelines. The order itself tells you nothing about the case, so I suggest you start with Kimberly A. Kralowec at The Appellate Practitioner, who provides a brief rundown, from which it makes sense next to check this SCOTUSBlog post from before the ruling, describing efforts by a similarly situated petitioner to save the Claiborne case despite its…
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Effective Cert Petitions in the Absence of a Direct Circuit Split
SCOTUSblog has an update to its earlier post on drafting effective cert petitions in the absence of a direct circuit split. The post links to the most recent podcast and provides all the information you need to get up to date on SCOTUSblog’s coverage of this topic. It also provides instructions for subscribing to SCOTUSblog’s podcasts, several of which have covered other aspects of cert petition drafting.