Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 10-98, May 31, 2011

In 2003, FBI agents arrested the Respondent under a material witness warrant. The Respondent sued then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, claiming that in the aftermath of September 11th, the government undertook a program to detain terrorism suspects through pretextual material witness claims. The Court held (J. Scalia wrote the opinion, joined by C.J. Roberts, J. Kennedy, J. Thomas, and J. Alito; J. Kennedy filed a concurring opinion, joined in part by J. Ginsburg, J. Breyer, and J. Sotomayor; J. Ginsburg filed an opinion concurring in the result, joined by J. Breyer and J. Sotomayor; J. Sotomayor filed an opinion concurring in the result, joined by J. Ginsburg and J. Breyer; J. Kagan did not participate) that the case should be dismissed because 1) motive is not generally an element of a reasonable-detention analysis under the 4th Amendment, and 2) without a clearly established legal standard prohibiting the pretextual material witness program, the Petitioner enjoyed qualified immunity.

Robert Chesney in Lawfare looked at the concurring opinions (including the opinion of swing-voter Justice Kennedy) to explore other 4th Amendment problems posed by the material witness statute. Lyle Denniston in SCOTUS Blog also considered the fragility of the coalition that came together for this nominally unanimous opinion.

Global-Tech Appliances, Inc., et al. v. SEB S.A., 10-6, May 31, 2011

The Respondent built a better deep fat fryer, and the Petitioners beat a path through the Respondent’s back door. Actually, the Petitioners induced others to infringe the Respondent’s patent. The Court (J. Alito wrote the opinion; J. Kennedy filed a dissenting opinion) rejected the Federal Circuit’s lower standard for proving inducement, then applied a concept from the criminal law–willful blindness–and found that a party may not consciously shield itself from the knowledge of a patent to avoid infringement liability.

UPI summarized the case and holding. In his SCOTUS Blog post following oral argument in February, Ronald Mann examined the case in the context of the Court’s recent history of “giving no credence to the Federal Circuit’s institutional expertise in patent law.”