The full set of opinions, with the syllabus, total 193 pages. I’m not sure if that’s a record, but it’s up there. The primary dissent is a joint dissent by all four dissenting justices. This is unusual. Their dissent rejects both the individual mandate and the Medicaid expansion. Because these two provisions are central to […]
Archive | Supreme Court
Justices Time Their Retirements According to Political Party
Do U.S. Supreme Court justices tend to try to time their retirements to help the political party of the president who appointed them? University of Chicago sociologist Rafe Stolzenberg and I have an article in the journal Demography that finally answers that question: Yes, justices do act politically when deciding whether to retire or take […]
Correcting Misconceptions about the Roberts Court
The Supreme Court has not yet ruled against the individual mandate, and who knows whether it will. Yet this has not stopped commentators from making sweeping charges about the Court. Many commentators, for instance, are charging that the Roberts Court is “activist.” For some, “activist” is just a label for judges that make decisions they […]
Georgia-Pacific West v NEDC: a good case for certiorari
By David Kopel on June 20, 2012 12:35 pm in Administrative Law, Environment, Supreme Court, Uncategorized
Court-watchers are wondering if Thursday, June 21, will see the release of Supreme Court rulings on Obamacare or Arizona’s laws against illegal aliens. There’s another important decision that the Court almost certainly make on Thursday: whether to grant certiorari in Georgia-Pacific West v. Northwest Environment Defense Center. (All the relevant documents are here, on Scotusblog.) Jonathan […]
Is the Ninth Circuit Due for Environmental Correction?
By Jonathan H. Adler on June 20, 2012 10:05 am in Environment, Ninth Circuit Smackdown (Again), Supreme Court
Will 2012 provide a repeat of 2008? Specifically, will the Supreme Court’s October 2012 term find the Supreme Court repeatedly reversing the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in environmental cases as it did in the October 2008 term? In 2008, the Supreme Court heard an unusually high number of environmental cases, six: […]
Reading the Tea Leaves on First American Financial Corp v. Edwards
It looks to me that there is only one case undecided from the Supreme Court’s December sitting — First American Financial Corp v. Edwards — and only one Justice without a majority opinion assignment: Justice Thomas. That suggests that the majority opinion was at least initially assigned to Justice Thomas. The case involves whether the […]
Does Scalia’s New Book Reveal His Vote on the Individual Mandate?
With fevered anticipation of the Court’s most-awaited ruling in years, pundits and scribes are searching for clues as to how the Court will rule. Previewing Justice Scalia’s forthcoming book, Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts (co-authored with Bryan Garner), Adam Liptak reports on a few passages that could suggest how Scalia is likely to rule. […]
Today’s Interesting Lineup(s)
Today the Supreme Court decided Salazar v. Ramah Navajo Chapter. The Court split 5-4 in a most interesting way. Justice Sotomayor wrote for the majority, joined by Justices Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, and Kagan. Chief Justice Roberts dissented, joined by Justices Ginsburg, Breyer and Alito. Also interesting and unusual, as the folks at SCOTUSBlog note, is […]
Sixth Circuit Smackdown Watch
Today the Supreme Court issued a unanimous per curiam opinion summarily reversing a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Parker v. Matthews. The opinion begins: In this habeas case, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit set aside two 29-year-old murder convictions based on the […]
Today’s Unusual Lineup: Elgin v. Dept. of Treasury
This morning the Supreme Court issued its opinion in Elgin v. Department of Treasury, in which the Court held that the Civil Service Reform Act precludes district court jurisdiction of suits by federal employees alleging they were fired unconstitutionally. The Court’s lineup in this case is quite unusual. Justice Thomas wrote the opinion of the […]
The Great Gun Control War of the 20th Century — And its Lessons for Gun Laws Today
By David Kopel on May 31, 2012 2:37 pm in Constitutional History, Constitutional Law, Fourteenth Amendment, Guns, History, McDonald v. City of Chicago, Politics, Popular Constitutionalism, Registration, Right to carry, Supreme Court
This is the subject of my article in a forthcoming symposium issue of the Fordham Urban Law Journal. The article details the political, cultural, social, and legal battles over gun control from the 1920s to the early 21st century. Here’s the abstract: A movement to ban handguns began in the 1920s in the Northeast, led […]
Court to Consider Standing to Challenge FISA Surveillance
This morning the Supreme Court accepted certiorari in Clapper v. Amnesty International USA, which presents the question whether journalists and human rights organizations have standing to challenge the constitutionality of electronic surveillance of international communications without direct evidence their communications have been surveilled. In this case, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit […]
Justice Breyer’s Bad Luck
Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer has had a home robbed twice in the past three months. First burglars raided his Carribbean vacation home, while Breyer was there with guests. Then, earlier this month, his Washington, D.C. home was robbed too.
White on Toobin on Citizens United
Adam White finds Jeffrey Toobin re-writing history in his much discussed New Yorker article on Citizens United. As Toobin set up the story, Citizens United was a little case, involving a “narrow” statutory question. According to Toobin’s New Yorker article, “There did not see to be a lot riding on the outcome.” White finds Toobin’s […]
Jeffrey Toobin on Citizens United
The latest New Yorker has an extensive excerpt of Jeffrey Toobin’s forthcoming book, The Oath: The Obama White House vs. the Supreme Court, focusing on the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision. The story, “Money Unlimited: How Chief Justice John Roberts orchestrated the Citizens United decision,” is everything you’d expect from a Toobin piece. It’s engaging […]