Deborah Pearlstein has an important response to Ben Wittes’s Washington Post op-ed on the Obama administration and detention policy, cross posted at Opinio Juris and Balkinization. I continue to hold Ben’s views on this, but Deborah offers an incisive next move in the debate and it is important reading for those following this crucial topic.
Archive | Supreme Court
Petition for Certiorari in McCane v. United States
Today my co-counsel and I filed a petition for certiorari in the case of McCane v. United States. The question presented: Whether the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule applies to a search authorized by precedent at the time of the search that is subsequently ruled unconstitutional. From the petition: The Court should grant […]
United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542 (Year?)
The Supreme Court will consider whether the Second Amendment should apply to the states, and thus whether to overrule United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542 (1876). Or is it United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542 (1875)? Both citations are commonly used; HeinOnline reports that the 1875 date is given in roughly 60% of […]
Supreme Court Agrees To Decide Whether the Second Amendment Applies to the States
The Court has granted certiorari on this issue, in McDonald v. City of Chicago.
Justice Brandeis
By David Bernstein on September 29, 2009 8:08 am in Constitutional History, Freedom of Speech, Supreme Court
The New York Times has published two reviews of Mel Urofsky’s new biography of Louis Brandeis. I haven’t seen the book yet, but Mel had sent me the page proofs of several chapters earlier this year, and they were great. Whiles the parts of the book I read struck me as admiring but with appropriate […]
Honey, I Shrunk the Docket!
What explains the Supreme Court’s shrunken docket? Adam Liptak reports on various theories to explain why the Supreme Court takes fewer cases, including increased participation in the “cert pool” and a decline in cert petitions filed by the Solicitor General. Liptak also highlights research by University of Minnesota law professor David Stras focusing on the […]
The Roberts Court’s Hidden “Heart of Darkness”
Dahlia Lithwick is dismayed. Writing in Slate and Newsweek she laments that the Supreme Court is “completely misunderstood by the American public.” A majority of Americans approve of the Court’s performance in recent polls, she reports, and half of Americans think the Court is neither too liberal nor too conservative. So clearly the public does […]