Archive | June, 2004

The Court of Appeals of Minnesota confronted an interesting question yesterday: May a trial court require a defendant to hide a cross that he was wearing, so that the jury couldn’t see it? (The Minnesota Constitution has been interpreted as mandating the government to accommodate religious practices in many contexts; but even under the U.S. […]

Which famous North Carolina politician said the following to Business North Carolina magazine about President Bush’s tax cut?: “I would not have voted for the tax cut, based on what I know. I think he was eager for attention, so the fellow down at the pool hall could say, `Boy, that fellow has guts.’ There […]

Reader Michele Kerr points out something that I missed, from the odd op-ed about abortion and Democrats (the one I mentioned here): * Six out of 10 Americans call themselves conservatives. Only a quarter of them are having abortions. * A little more than one-third of Americans call themselves liberals. More than four in 10 […]

Justice Breyer (joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice O’Connor) dissented in today’s Ashcroft v. ACLU. The Child Online Protection Act, he reasoned, was very narrow. COPA doesn’t limit itself to unprotected obscenity (defined roughly as speech that appeals to the “prurient interest,” depicts sex in a “patently offensive” way, and lacks “serious value”). Rather, […]

I couldn’t find a copy of the letter online, so I thought I’d keypunch it in. (It’s been publicly released by the Second Circuit.) Here it is: June 24, 2004 The Honorable John M. Walker, Chief Judge United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit 157 Church Street New Haven, CT 06510 Dear John, I write […]

Pejmanesque has a very long post on the subject, but with lots of relevant quotes from the cases.

Another reminder that student Notes can influence people, from the recent federal district court decision that holds the federal Sentencing Guidelines unconstitutional (United States v. Green), the judge writes: The conflict between the Guidelines and the mandate of Apprendi and Ring first came to this Court’s attention when it encountered a February 2004 Note in […]

An odd column that reasons that because Democrats are more likely to have abortions, and Democrats’ children would be more likely to grow up to vote Democrat, a liberal abortion policy is costing Democrats votes. It’s odd for a couple of reasons. First, consider the closing argument: For advocates so fundamentally committed to changing the […]

SCOTUSBlog reports on how often pairs of Justices voted together. Here are the top 9 percentages (counting those times that the Justices agreed with each other entirely): Souter Ginsburg 85% Rehnquist O’Connor 79% Rehnquist Kennedy 77% Stevens Souter 77% Ginsburg Breyer 77% Stevens Ginsburg 75% Scalia Thomas 73% O’Connor Breyer 70% Souter Breyer 70% The […]

from SCOTUSBlog. Puzzle (not terribly telling, but I hope amusing): Of the circuits that have had five or more cases before the Court this Term, which circuit has the lowest reversal rate? Go here to see the answer; also check the overall reversal rate for all jurisdictions.

in today’s Ashcroft v. ACLU decision, in which Justice Thomas provided the critical fifth vote for the majority, and Justice Scalia took a very different view in dissent.

Judge Richard Posner and Vicki Jackson square off about this in Legal Affairs.

I have a question. Has there ever, in the four months since it broke, been a refutation of, an official response to, or even a developed conservative talking point on the story that Pentagon plans to take out Zarqawi before the Iraq war were vetoed by the White House, because Zarqawi was more convenient as […]

Alan Wirzbicki has a new article up at TNR on one of my favorite subjects: the US-Australian alliance. He writes that Aussie PM John Howard faces a tough challenge from antiwar Labor party candidate Mark Latham in elections that could take place as soon as August. Not surprisingly, Iraq is high on the agenda. Most […]

One of the prongs of the Court’s obscenity test is that the speech must “appeal to the prurient interest” in order to be punishable as obscenity. (This requirement is not sufficient — two other prongs must be met — but it is necessary.) The Child Online Protection Act likewise required that the speech be designed […]