Archive for category: Courts

• Can Being A Minority Be A Conflict Of Interest?

  By Noah Kaplan, Courts, Issue Areas, LGBTQ Rights May 2, 2011 8:42 am 5 comments

  After the revelation by Proposition 8 judge Vaughn Walker that he is gay and in a long-term same-sex relationship, Prop. 8 supporters are trying to have his landmark ruling striking down the California referendum vacated on the grounds that he should have recused himself. This is an attempt to strain the general practice of conflict of interest recusal from family and financial conflict of interest to some other type of personal conflict of interest.

   

• Harvard Professor Calls On Justices To Retire

  By Noah Kaplan, Courts, Issue Areas April 29, 2011 11:17 am 1 comment

  Harvard Professor Randall Kennedy suggests that Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer should consider retirement in the interest of the long-term survival of the more progressive wing of the court. Kennedy calls retirement “the responsible thing to do.” Looking ahead to the 2012 election and the prospect, however slim, of the beginning of a new eight-year Republican administration, Professor Kennedy fears that the two moderate progressives wouldn’t be able to wait eight years to retire, and “they will have contributed to a disaster.”

   

• In a 5-4 decision, SCOTUS rules that corporations can block consumers' class-action lawsuits.

  Consumers and Corporations, Courts, Issue Areas April 27, 2011 9:09 pm no comments

  In what will surely be seen as a sweeping win for corporations and a a major abrogation of the class-action lawsuit, the Supreme Court ruled today that corporations can force unhappy customers to settle disputes in binding arbitration. The case arose from a class-action litigation brought on behalf of California [...]

   

• Firm Drops DOMA Defense

  Courts, Issue Areas, LGBTQ Rights April 25, 2011 8:06 pm no comments

  King and Spalding announced today that they would no longer be representing the House of Representatives in litigation defending DOMA. The House had hired the firm last week after the Justice Department refused to defend the law and Attorney General Eric Holder called it unconstitutional. The chairman of the firm [...]

   

• Justice is (now) “how recently the judge ate”

  Courts, Criminal Justice, Issue Areas April 20, 2011 9:33 am 1 comment

  According to The Economist (and others), the old adage “what the judge ate for breakfast” should instead be “how recently the judge ate.” We’ve probably all heard that justice is “what the judge ate for breakfast.” Although typically invoked to explain to a confused 1L the inexplicably divergent outcomes in [...]

   

• Judges Say New Sentencing Law Still Doesn't Stop Injustice

  Courts, Criminal Justice, Issue Areas April 18, 2011 7:15 pm no comments

  Many federal judges are criticizing the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, aimed at narrowing the gap between sentences for convictions involving crack and powder cocaine, for being less than fair.  Under the presumption that laws do apply retroactively without a clear statement from Congress, the law appears to only reduce [...]

   

• Legal Scholars Argue Supreme Court Should Limit Campaign Spending in Judicial Elections

  Courts, Issue Areas, Voting and Elections April 18, 2011 3:57 pm 1 comment

  Dean of the law school at the University of California, Irvine, Erwin Cherminsky, and associate professor of law at Hofstra, James J. Sample, published an Op Ed piece in the New York Times yesterday arguing that the Supreme Court should limit campaign contributions in judicial elections. Cherminsky and Sample assert [...]

   
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  Gay Couple Loses Birth Certificate Battle in the 5th Circuit

  By Jason Lee, Courts, Issue Areas, LGBTQ Rights April 13, 2011 9:00 am no comments

  A little over a year ago, a federal appeals court ruled in favor of a couple who had adopted a Louisiana-born child and sought to get an amended birth certificate from the Louisiana Office of Public Health and Vital Records Registry.  The couple wanted both of their names listed on [...]

   
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  Justice Kagan's First Dissent Challenges An Arcane View Of The Establishment Clause

  Courts, First Amendment, Issue Areas April 12, 2011 6:37 pm 1 comment

  Stanley Fish of the NY Times has glowing words for Justice Kagan on the occasion of her first dissent since joining the Court. In her dissent to the opinion in Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Winn, Kagan pokes holes in the majority’s argument, filling the void with a “landscape” of revealing examples. The case deals [...]

   

• 9th Circuit Won't Ask You For Your Papers

  By Noah Kaplan, Courts, Issue Areas, Privacy and National Security, Race and Immigration April 11, 2011 9:17 pm 6 comments

  The 9th Circuit Monday upheld the action by an Arizona district court blocking parts of Arizona’s controversial immigration law from going into effect. The ruling by District Judge Susan R. Bolton that the court upheld blocked provisions in the law that would allow for warrantless arrests of suspected illegal immigrants and would criminalize the failure of immigrants to carry registration papers.