It appears that Justice Antonin Scalia is the subject of a stage production, fittingly titled “The Originalist” set to open at the Arena Stage in Washington. Playbill describes the plot of the play: Here’s how the production is billed: “When a bright, liberal law school graduate embarks on a nerve-wracking clerkship with Justice Scalia, she…
Category Archives: Supreme Court
Durham asks Supremes to reject Duke lacrosse appeal
The Durham Herald Sun reported last week that the City of Durham has filed a response to the petition for certiorari filed by 3 former Duke lacrosse players. The players are asking that theSupreme Court reverse a decision by the Fourth Circuit upholding the dismissal of the players’ claims against the city. According to the…
Chief Justice Roberts “Long Game”: Is the Chief Crazy Like a Fox?
Interesting pieceby Adam Liptak in the New York Times last week about John Roberts and the so-called “long game”. Liptak’s hypothesis is that Roberts is patiently planting seeds, quietly, with the acquiescence and often approval of the liberal justices, that will enable him to pull the Court to the right slowly over time: The chief…
Major defeat for transnationalists at the Supreme Court
Those who would like to see US courts import so-called international law norms suffered a major defeat at the Supreme Court today. In the Kiobel case, Chief Justice Roberts, writing for a 5 justice majority (the Court’s liberals concurred in the judgment, but did not sign on to the Chief’s opinion), held that the Alien Tort…
Justice Jackson at the Vatican
Professor John Q. Barrett of St. John’s University Law School, who is working on an eagerly-anticipated biography of former Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, maintains a very entertaining email subscription list, through which he distributes on a fairly regular basis interesting information and anecdotes about Justice Jackson. This week’s installment relates an entertaining account of…
Three Cheers for Mike Carvin
One of the most consistently vilified decisions of the so-called conservative Supreme Court under John Roberts – indeed, the decision that led President Obama to publicly call out the conservative justices at a State of the Union address – is Citizens United, in which the Court sharply curtailed Congressional limitations on corporate campaign expenditures. It seems…
Is Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act Doomed?
A federal appellate court recently struck down Texas’ proposed Congressional redistricting plan, finding that the plan violated Section 5. Might the court’s opinion in that case provide the impetus for the Supreme Court to strike down Section 5 once and for all? That is what Nicholas Stephanopolous suggests in a recent post at The New…
Scotus Blog Liveblog
For anyone interested in up to date info from the Supreme Court on opinion days, Scotus blog is live blogging. You can follow it here.
Obamacare predictions?
We’re nearing the end of the Supreme Court term, and soon to come to come will be the much anticipated ruling on the “ObamaCare” case(s). I do not presume to posit myself as astute or learned an observer of the Court as, for example, my friends at ScotusBlog. But I’ll play the parlor game. Let’s…
Is Obamacare Doomed?
After watching this morning’s arguments on the individual mandate CNN’s legal analyst Jeff Toobin – a liberal – seems to think so. I will happily take his word for it.