Supreme Court practice has a language unto itself. One of the terms you will occasionally hear at the certiorari stage is that a petition has “vehicle problems.” Well, what does that mean? And what the heck is a vehicle? The Court doesn’t like to waste time. So when they consider granting a [...]
The intersection between state law sanctifying medical marijuana and federal law outright banning it is a hot topic around the country. On Tuesday, the debate landed at the U.S. Supreme Court’s white marble steps. An Oregonian County filed a petition for certiorari in the U.S. Supreme Court arguing that a federal law banning firearm possession [...]
With the start of the summer recess, the Supreme Court discontinued use of the 2010 Term docket numbers, ending with number 10-1558—a petition for mandamus filed by firefighter Frank Ricci. Yes, that Frank Ricci. For the fifth straight year, the number of paid petitions for certiorari, mandamus and original habeas corpus filed [...]
I remember when Steve Lubet questioned whether former Solicitor General Ted Olson should be allowed to argue that the federal campaign finance reform statute was unconstitutional in Citizens United, because, as Solicitor General, he had argued a contrary position. At the time, I didn’t understand why that mattered since “advocates represent clients,” [...]
Sometimes the Supreme Court reaches out to decide issues not raised in the petition for certiorari. It is a rare occurrence. But it happened in Turner v. Rogers, No. 10-10. If you weren’t following the case, here are the facts: Michael D. Turner racked up large debts owed to his child’s mother [...]
The U.S. Supreme Court largely ducked the most outlandish parts of the Second Circuit’s decision in American Electric. Instead, the Court reversed the lower court on the easiest of the several grounds for reversal: displacement of federal common law. But how would the political question doctrine have fared had the Court [...]
Yesterday, Adam Liptak at the NY Times covered a Supreme Court trend: the Justices’ use of dictionary definitions in their opinions. He writes that: In May alone, the justices cited dictionaries in eight cases to determine what legislators had meant when they used words like “prevent,” “delay” and “report.” Over the years, justices have looked [...]
If we release prisoners to relieve overcrowding, then prisoners will rape, rob and murder our citizens. That is frightening; therefore we shouldn’t release prisoners, even though the State cannot afford to humanely incarcerate them. This argument was at the heart of Justices Scalia and Alito’s dissenting opinions last week in the California prison [...]
The Supreme Court released their case distribution schedule for the October 2011 Term. The schedule lists the Court's distribution dates for both both in forma pauperis and paid cases, as well as the corresponding conference dates. The distribution dates are important for determining the due date of cert stage reply brief. To view the 2011 Term [...]
The discussion about the Supreme Court's landmark decision last week in Brown v. Plata continues unabated. There are basically two sides of the debate. Those predicting that a release of prisoners will create a crime wave in California, and therefore, the Supreme Court should not have upheld the release order. You can find these views [...]