I have just posted my first post as an occasional blogger on SCOTUSBlog — a preview of the argument next week in Walden v. Fiore. An excerpt:
The facts sound like the beginning of one of the Court’s many constitutional tort cases. Gina Fiore and Keith Gipson are professional gamblers who were — like millions of other travelers every year — changing planes at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson airport. Fiore and Gipson were carrying $97,000 in cash, much of which they’d won gambling in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and were returning to their home in Nevada.
The cash aroused the suspicions of law enforcement at the Atlanta airport, and the two travelers were questioned by Anthony Walden, a local police officer and deputized Drug Enforcement Administration agent, who eventually seized all of their money for possible forfeiture. …
The lawfulness of Walden’s conduct (and the factual truth of the plaintiffs’ allegations) is not before the Court. Instead, the issue presented by this case is whether Walden can be sued in a federal court in Nevada. That controversy raises questions of both personal jurisdiction and venue. . . .
I’ll be blogging at SCOTUSBlog on some procedural and jurisdictional topics in the future; I haven’t yet decided how frequently I’ll be linking to them from here.