Or, well, maybe not. From the Washington Post: The Justice Department has all but concluded it will not bring charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for publishing classified documents because government lawyers said they could not do so without also prosecuting U.S. news organizations and journalists, according to U.S. officials. . . . The Obama […]
Author Archive | Orin Kerr
VC Reader Poll on Today’s Change in Senate Procedure (aka “the Nuclear Option”)
Time for a VC Reader poll, asking for your views and your politics: Do you support today’s filibuster reform in the Senate? Yes, and I tend to vote Republican No, and I tend to vote Republican Yes, and I tend to vote Democratic No, and I tend to vote Democratic Yes, and I don’t tend […]
Cell Phone Search Cases Calendared for 12/6 Conference
Back in August, I wrote about two pending cert petitions before the Supreme Court involving when the Fourth Amendment allows the government to search a search phone incident to arrest. Today the Court scheduled the two cases for the December 6th conference. In other words, it’s likely (but not certain) that we’ll find out then […]
Parrillo on the Rise of Legislative History in Statutory Interpretation
An interesting article, just out in the Yale Law Journal: Nicholas R. Parrillo, Leviathan and Interpretive Revolution: The Administrative State, the Judiciary, and the Rise of Legislative History, 1890-1950.
Results of the VC Reader Poll on Ranking Supreme Court Justices
The results so far are here, based on 1,853 votes. A few thoughts: 1) As you might expect from a right-of-center blog, the right-of-center Justices were more popular than the left-of-center Justices. At the same time, every Justice had his or her fans. For example, in a one-on-one matchup between the most favorite of the […]
Rank Your Favorite Supreme Court Justices
Here’s a VC reader poll: Who are your favorite current Supreme Court Justices? Rank all nine at this link. For entertainment value and to satisfy idle curiosity only, naturally.
Randolph, Fernandez, and the Puzzle of Limiting Third-Party Consent
In Wednesday’s oral argument in Fernandez v. California, no party asked the Supreme Court to overturn Georgia v. Randolph. But the more I think about Fernandez, the more I think the issues in the case just point to the underlying problem with Randolph. In this post, I want to say a bit about why. The […]
A Few Thoughts on the DOJ Brief in the Lavabit Case
DOJ has filed its brief in the Lavabit appeal before the Fourth Circuit. I blogged at length on Lavabit’s brief, so I thought I would offer a few thoughts on DOJ’s brief: 1) In general, it’s a solid brief. It’s going to be extremely unpopular in the IANAL computer nerd world, obviously, but it’s mostly […]
Oral Argument in Fernandez v. California: An Initial Reaction
I was at the Supreme Court this morning for the oral argument in Fernandez v. California, the Fourth Amendment case on third-party consent that I blogged about last week. I have just a few minutes now and more time later, so I will offer a few quick thoughts here and hope to offer more detailed […]
The Golden Age of Treatises
From a 1997 obituary of law professor Louis Loss, the author of a widely-used treatise on securities law: In shaping the field of securities law, Mr. Loss was known for efforts to apply common sense to statutes that were somewhat opaque. “He was the great codifier,” Mr. Seligman said yesterday. “He could see the field […]
Rory Little on Fernandez v. California
UC Hastings professor Rory Little has written a response to my post on Fernandez v. California, the third-party consent case that the Supreme Court will be hearing next week. Professor Little asked if I would be interested in posting it, and I am happy to do so. I’ve included a few thoughts in reply at […]
A Preliminary Legal Analysis of Eckert v. City of Deming, the “Clenched Buttocks” Case
A lot of folks in the blogosphere have been writing about this story on Eckert v. City of Deming, a Fourth Amendment civil case involving a routine traffic stop that turned into the government forcing a suspect to undergo invasive medical procedures looking for drugs. I thought I would run through some of the allegations […]
My Thoughts on Fernandez v. California
On November 13th, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in a Fourth Amendment case, Fernandez v. California, on the scope of the third-party consent doctrine. Fernandez isn’t the most important case on the Court’s docket. The Question Presented is narrow and the practical stakes are pretty small. But the case raises some interesting conceptual […]
Another Response to Geoffrey Stone
In his post below, Eugene K. responds to Geoffrey Stone’s latest reason why the conservative Justices are terrible, horrible, no good, very bad Justices. According to Stone, the conservatives are intellectually weak political hacks, with the evidence being the party affiliation of the President who nominated the circuit court judges that their clerks worked before […]
What are Clothes?
A fun oral argument at the Supreme Court today on that question, Sandifer v. United States Steel Corp.