Yesterday the Court released orders from its May 16 Conference, granting cert. in five new cases; it also issued four opinions in argued cases.
In Metrish v. Lancaster, the Court unanimously held that a state prisoner who was convicted of first-degree murder was not entitled to federal habeas relief when state courts precluded him from relying on a “diminished capacity” defense that had been available at the time of the murder. At this blog, Lyle Denniston notes that “[t]he decision, while interpreting generously the power of a state supreme court to cast aside a string of lower state court rulings allowing a legal defense, did not appear to make much new law on retroactivity doctrine.” Other reports come from Kent Scheidegger at C&C Blog and Jaclyn Belczyk at JURIST.
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John Elwood reviews Monday’s relisted cases.
If you’re reading this post, presumably your early retirement plans didn’t pan out either, meaning you’re probably not in Jamaica preparing for a fulfilling life of lobster shooters and mountains of ganja piña coladas. But luckily, for the rest of us, there’s still Relist Watch, which is now empirically proven to be of at least some marginal utility to your life – to wit, of the five cases granted yesterday, four were featured in last week’s post, giving us the same authoritative heft as sugarless-gum-recommending dentists. (Meanwhile, Tumblr had zero. Just sayin’, Marissa.)
Break out the Sarbanes-Oxley treatise: The grant in “one-time” relist Lawson v. FMR, 12-3, means the Court will soon be considering the First Circuit’s narrow interpretation of SOX’s employee-retaliation protections. And you can hear the sound of Bouzouki and breaking plates all the way in Athens following the cert. grant in one-time relist Town of Greece, New York v. Galloway, 12-696, which considers the propriety of a town council’s legislative prayers. Opa! (Sadly, it looks like summer school for fellow Establishment-Clause-case Elmbrook School District v. Doe, 12-755, which after six relists appears now to be on hold for Greece.) Celebrations are probably a little more subdued over on the Left Coast following the grant in one-time relist Fernandez v. California, 12-7822, which asks whether an absent co-tenant’s prior refusal invalidates a physically present co-tenant’s consent to a search. So liberally were the grants given yesterday that even released holds got a star turn: Northwest, Inc. v. Ginsberg, 12-462, which was released from its slumbers just last week following the opinion in Dan’s City Used Cars, Inc. v. Pelkey, 12-52, is now on the Court’s merits docket, meaning we might soon know whether the Airline Deregulation Act preempts certain kinds of disputes over frequent-flier miles and their promises of free fares, fine refreshments, and a curtain between you and the huddled masses.
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The petition of the day is:
12-895
Issue: Whether the offense of aiding and abetting the use of a firearm during and in relation to a crime of violence or drug trafficking crime, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 924(c)(1)(A) and 2, requires proof of (i) intentional facilitation or encouragement of the use of the firearm, as held by the First, Second, Third, Fifth, Seventh, Eighth, Ninth, and Eleventh Circuits, or (ii) simple knowledge that the principal used a firearm during a crime of violence or drug trafficking crime in which the defendant also participated, as held by the Sixth, Tenth, and District of Columbia Circuits.
Analysis
Amid signs that the ruling was a very easy one to reach, the Supreme Court on Monday allowed the state of Michigan to deny a man accused of murder a legal defense that he previously had but then lost the right to use at a second trial. Allowing the withdrawal of a mental defect defense after the fact, the Court ruled unanimously, did not violate the man’s constitutional rights to fair treatment. It took the Court less than four weeks to prepare that ruling.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the Court in Metrish v. Lancaster (docket 12-547), a case that had been argued on the final hearing day of the Term, on April 24. The decision, while interpreting generously the power of a state supreme court to cast aside a string of lower state court rulings allowing a legal defense, did not appear to make much new law on retroactivity doctrine. Continue reading »
Returning for the first time in three decades to the constitutionality of saying prayers at the opening of a government meeting, the Supreme Court on Monday took on a case involving Town Board sessions in the upstate New York community named Greece, a city of about 100,000 people. For years, it followed the practice of having local clergy — mostly leaders of Christian congregations — recite prayers to start Town Board public meetings.
The case of Town of Greece v. Galloway (docket 12-696) was one of five newly granted cases, all of which will be heard and decided in the Term starting next October. No current member of the Court was serving when the Court last ruled on government prayers in the case of Marsh v. Chambers, in 1983.
The Chief Justice announcing orders (Art Lien)
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With the help of our reporter, Lyle Denniston, we will be live blogging as orders and opinions are issued today. Once you see the window and our initial welcome, we ask that you do not refresh your browser. Updates will appear without the need for refreshing.
Briefly:
- As part of her outreach to poor and immigrant parents, Justice Sonia Sotomayor spoke recently at the New York City Department of Education’s English Language Learning Parent Conference, where she urged the audience to work hard to place their children on the path to college and career success. Mark Walsh covers the event for Education Week.
- Stephanie Green of Bloomberg News reports on the gala event held last week by Public Citizen, at which the group awarded retired Justice John Paul Stevens its Lifetime Achievement Award. (Allison included other coverage of this event in Friday’s round-up.)
- In commentary for JURIST, law student Fangxing Li discusses Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, the Equal Protection Clause challenge to the university’s use of race in undergraduate admissions decisions, and argues that affirmative action policies may harm diversity more than they contribute to it. Continue reading »
On Monday the Court granted five new cases and issued four opinions in argued cases. The archived Live Blog is here.
On Thursday the Justices will meet for their May 23 Conference. Our list of “Petitions to watch” for that Conference is here.
Every Term, thousands of litigants file petitions for certiorari, asking the Justices to review their cases on the merits. In roughly a dozen, the Justices initially neither grant nor deny review. Instead, they issue an order “invit[ing] the Solicitor General to file a brief expressing the views of the United States” – also known as a “CVSG,” for “call for the views of the Solicitor General.” There is no deadline for the Solicitor General to file these “invitation” briefs, but the government has traditionally filed a group of them in May so that the Justices can consider the petitions before their summer recess begins in late June. We expect the government to file approximately a dozen of these invitation briefs in May.
The Solicitor General has now filed the first batch of briefs in response to those invitations from the Court. The parties to the cases will now have the opportunity to file supplemental briefs responding to the Solicitor General’s submissions. We expect the Justices to consider the following three cases at their June 6 Conference: Continue reading »
The petition of the day is:
12-926
Issue: (1) Whether the federal savings bond statute and regulations impliedly preempt longstanding state unclaimed property laws, where the statute and regulations are wholly silent on the treatment of unclaimed bonds and where Congress has expressly preempted state unclaimed property laws in numerous other contexts; and (2) whether application of state unclaimed property laws to unclaimed U.S. savings bonds owned by state residents violates the intergovernmental immunity doctrine, where these laws reflect the states’ exercise of constitutionally reserved escheat power.
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