Legal minds on legal matters and whatever else strikes our fancy.
You are an American. You are today the most powerful national citizen who has ever existed. But you live in a world mostly populated by non-Americans, many of whom believe you enjoy privileges they do not, and many of those people would like to make some changes. Some of those non-American change-seekers would love to [...]
Tom Goldstein and SCOTUS Blog put together their end-of-the-term memorandum and stat pack, which you can find here and here. A couple points about the 2010 Term statistics. Although every year the Court assails the Ninth Circuit, this Term really was THE Term of rebuke for the Ninth Circuit. The Court normally takes a lot of Ninth [...]
This week the Supreme Court handed down a decision that struck California’s ban on the distribution of violent video games to minors, in part because the majority found that children have a constitutionally protected right to free expression. Justice Clarence Thomas, one of two dissenters, filed an opinion rooted in his originalist [...]
Today, the U.S. Sentencing Commission "voted unanimously" to give "retroactive effect to its proposed permanent amendment to the federal sentencing guidelines that implements the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010," a press release said. The retroactively applicable guideline amendment for crack cocaine offenses will allow over 12,000 federal prisoners to seek resentencing. According to the Sentencing Commission [...]
The Third Circuit took the unusual step of declaring a Supreme Court opinion (Padilla v. Kentucky, 130 S.Ct. 1473 (2010)) retroactively applicable to defedants filing habeas corpus motions. The case is United States v. Orocio and the opinion can be found here. For those who do not regularly follow post-conviction and habeas [...]
Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Assn., 08-1448 California passed a law regulating the sale and rental of violent video games to minors. The 9th Circuit declined to use the standard applied to laws restricting sexual obscenity, and instead struck down the law after a strict scrutiny examination. Writing for a diverse majority, Justice [...]
The Supreme Court today agreed to hear a case brought by the Pacific Legal Foundation, to decide whether an Idaho couple, Michael and Chantell Sackett, have the right to judicial review of an EPA “compliance order” that forces them to remove certain improvements on their land or face tens of thousands of dollars in fines [...]
I remember when Steve Lubet questioned whether former Solicitor General Ted Olson should be allowed to argue that the federal campaign finance reform statute was unconstitutional in Citizens United, because, as Solicitor General, he had argued a contrary position. At the time, I didn’t understand why that mattered since “advocates represent clients,” [...]
I will be writing a series of posts (entitled “Matters of Practice”) on the most frequently asked questions I receive about filing briefs in the U.S. Supreme Court. This is the first post in the series. At Cockle Printing, I am often asked what citation style the Supreme Court prefers and whether the Court’s rules specify [...]
The cover story of the new issue of Regulation magazine is my article on “Certificate of Necessity” (CON) laws, including the law that we’re challenging in the case of Missouri entrepreneur Michael Munie. CON laws are laws that require businesses to prove to a government agency that there’s a “public need” for a new business [...]