Posts Tagged ‘Supreme Court’

Philosophy, not gender, drives SCOTUS decisions

My new post at Cato at Liberty takes a look at yesterday’s Supreme Court decision in Williams v. Illinois, a Confrontation Clause case involving an accused rapist. It’s one more data point bolstering the observation that if the three most liberal members of the current Court (Ginsburg, Kagan, and Sotomayor) vote together with some frequency, it’s more because they share a certain philosophy about the law than because they’re all women.

P.S. I see Eugene Volokh got there first, drawing similar conclusions (& welcome Nabiha Syed, SCOTUSblog readers).

Filed under: Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, Supreme Court

June 18 roundup

Any dollar figure will do: “Ohio woman sues for $500 billion after her car is towed” [Jalopnik]
Rabbit-breeding without a license proves costly for Missouri family facing $90K USDA fine [Amy Alkon]
Per Linda Greenhouse, SCOTUS in Bush v Gore said “this opinion is never to be cited.” Oh? [Ed Whelan, NRO, further]
Boston loses young innovation-sector workers by overregulating nightlife [Dante Ramos, Globe]
“Title IX after 40 years” is topic of a discussion and lunch this Wednesday at Cato; “CA Lawmaker Speaks Truths on Title IX, Bashing Ensues” [Deborah Elson, American Sports Council; Chris Norby]
Department of Justice is conducting “incredibly aggressive” push against local governments under civil rights laws, or so says one supporter [Bagenstos] “School discipline and disparate impact” [John R. Martin, Federalist Society “Engage”]
Traffic laws changed considerably following the development of the automobile. Something sinister in that, or pretty much what one would expect? [Sarah Goodyear, “The invention of jaywalking,” Atlantic Cities]

Filed under: Boston, restaurants, school discipline, Supreme Court, Title IX, traffic laws

9-0, 9-0, 9-0

In three significant cases before the Supreme Court this term — Hosanna-Tabor Church v. EEOC on religious liberty, U.S. v. Jones on warrantless GPS search, and Sackett v. EPA on rights to challenge regulatory agency actions — the justices have been unanimous in rejecting the Obama Administration’s position. This Department of Justice, it seems, keeps asserting a vision of virtually unfettered executive-branch power that even its own appointees on the Court find unpersuasive. “If the government loses in the health-care or immigration cases,” writes my Cato Institute colleague Ilya Shapiro, “it won’t be because its lawyers had a bad day in court or because the justices ruled based on their political preferences. It will be because the Obama administration continues to make legal arguments that don’t pass the smell test.” [WSJ]

Filed under: Barack Obama, Supreme Court

Toobin on Citizens United

Ed Whelan charges the New Yorker’s Jeffrey Toobin with spinning the history of the First Amendment campaign regulation case [first, second, followup] Tom Goldstein at SCOTUSBlog, while sympathetic to Toobin’s overall project, also takes issue with him at numerous points. More: Adam White, Weekly Standard; Sam Bagenstos (what is supposed to have been so devious about Roberts’ handling of the case?); Howard Wasserman (why does Citizens United get singled out for demonization from among the several Court opinions pointing the same way?).

Filed under: campaign regulation, Supreme Court

Don’t cooperate with Washington reporters!

Quoth Warren Burger to Harry Blackmun, following Blackmun’s nomination to the Supreme Court [April 27, 1970 letter via Kyle Graham]

Filed under: media bias, Supreme Court

April 25 roundup

Eugene Volokh on civil liberties problems with the Violence Against Women Act reauthorization [first, second posts]
More coverage of the “N.C. vs. diet advice blogger” story we noted in February [Sara Burrows/Carolina Journal, Brian Doherty/Reason]
A case for an administrative alternative to asbestos litigation [Michael Hiltzik, L.A. Times] More on administered compensation funds [Adam Zimmerman, Prawfs]
Scuttle-the-boat insurance fraud scheme goes amusingly wrong [Lowering the Bar]
“To lower prices at the pump, abolish the boutique fuel regime” [Steven Hayward, Weekly Standard]
Supreme Court denies certiorari in NYC rent control case [Trevor Burrus, Cato; earlier here and here] But it does grant cert in Cato-backed property rights action [Ark. Fish & Game v. U.S.; Shapiro]
New Zealand’s innovative public policies: left, right or something else? [Eric Crampton] Let’s be more like the Scandinavian countries [Tim Worstall, UK] Don’t forget loser-pays…

Filed under: asbestos, bloggers and the law, domestic violence, eat drink and be merry, insurance fraud, loser pays, New Zealand, North Carolina, oil industry, Supreme Court, Sweden, Victim Compensation Fund

April 23 roundup

Fearful of adverse Supreme Court ruling, Department of Justice said to have exercised pressure on city of St. Paul to buckle in housing-disparate-impact case [Kevin Funnell]
Justice Janice Rogers Brown: we can dream, can’t we? [Weigel] The Brown/Sentelle opinion everyone’s talking about, questioning rational basis review of economic regulation [Hettinga v. U.S., milk regulations; Fisher, Kerr]
Claim: “The Bachelor” TV franchise discriminates on basis of race [Jon Hyman]
Chicago sold off municipal parking garages. Good. It also promised to disallow proposals for private parking nearby. Not good [Urbanophile]
Bad day in court for Zimmerman prosecution [Tom Maguire, more, Merritt]
“I want some systematic contacts wherever your long arm can reach” — hot-‘n’-heavy CivPro music video satire [ConcurOp, language]
Federal judge dismisses charge against man who advocated jury nullification outside courthouse [Lynch, Sullum, earlier]

Filed under: broadcasters, Chicago, competition through regulation, disparate impact, fair housing, jury nullification, Martin-Zimmerman case, procedure, Supreme Court

“Why Did Legal Elites Underestimate the Case Against the Mandate?”

Legal academia, and the sector of legal journalism most closely aligned with its views, is too remote from practice, too wrapped in theory and too far left to have a good feel for how the current Supreme Court approaches legal issues. Thus argues Jonathan Adler, who notes that “In some corners, it’s more important to reconcile one’s claims with the writings of John Rawls than the opinions of John Roberts.” More: Mike Rappaport (noting that the right too has been influenced by legal academia’s “preference for broad overarching theories,” as on originalism), Peter Suderman, David Bernstein.

Filed under: Dahlia Lithwick, law schools, Schools for Misrule, Supreme Court

High court rejects medical-method patent

A unanimous Supreme Court has struck down a patent over diagnostic methods in medicine, the latest in a series of controversies over the bounds of patentable subject matter. [Mayo v. Prometheus Labs; Marcia Coyle/NLJ, SCOTUSBlog, Timothy Lee/ArsTechnica] As I noted last fall, my Cato Institute colleagues Ilya Shapiro, Jim Harper and Timothy Lee filed an amicus brief on behalf of the side that prevailed yesterday, arguing against the spread of “a dangerous exception to traditional patent law… the Court should reject medical-diagnostic patents as impermissibly restricting the freedom of thought.”

Filed under: medical, patent law, Supreme Court

Bring back federal common law

Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins (1938) was the New Deal-era decision that directed federal courts to apply the law of the states in which they are located, and in so doing abolished a huge body of federal common law. In a new series of posts based on his book The Upside-Down Constitution, Michael Greve argues that Erie was wrongly decided and in practical terms a gigantic mistake that needs correcting. [Liberty and Law]

Filed under: federalism, Supreme Court