With the help of our reporter, Lyle Denniston, we will be live blogging as opinions are issued today. The Live Blog window is below the jump. 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. Continue reading »
Coverage of Monday’s opinions continued yesterday. At this blog, Brian Wolfman analyzed the decision in in Taniguchi v. Kan Pacific Saipan, in which the Court held that document translation costs cannot be recovered under 28 U.S.C. § 1290, the federal cost-shifting statute, and concluded that the opinion is “clear . . . logical, and fair.” The editorial staff of the New York Times took the opposite view, arguing that Justice Ginsburg’s dissenting opinion, in which she argued that the statute should be read to include translation of written as well as oral speech, had “the more convincing interpretation.” [Note: The author of this post worked on the case as a summer associate at Jones Day, which represented the petitioner.]
Coverage of the impending decision in the challenge to the Affordable Care Act also continues. At Bloomberg, Greg Stohr provides a primer on the history of the Commerce Clause and its applications. Continuing a theme raised by Kathleen Parker in the Washington Post (covered in yesterday’s round-up), several commentators discuss efforts to influence the Court’s decision. At the Washington Post’s Right Turn blog, Jennifer Rubin argues that “liberal advocates ask [Chief Justice] Roberts to knuckle under to the President’s public intimidation of the Supreme Court,” while at the Opinion L.A. blog of the Los Angeles Times, Michael McGough writes that “[s]ome conservatives are in a mild panic about the possibility that Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. will succumb to pressure from Democrats and the liberal media to uphold “Obamacare.” Over at Balkinization, Mark Tushnet argues that conservative commentators are preparing to argue that any decision upholding the mandate was tainted by politics. At Investor’s Business Daily, David Hogberg writes that both Democrats and Republicans would face political difficulties were the Court to strike down the Affordable Care Act. Writing at PrawfsBlawg, Paul Horwitz considers the possible motivations driving the recent spate of posts on the politics of the individual mandate decision. At the Volokh Conspiracy, Randy Barnett writes that if Chief Justice Roberts votes to uphold the act, his vote might appear, however unfairly, to have been influenced by political pressures; David Bernstein argues that a decision striking down the Affordable Care Act would not signal a “radical libertarian” turn in the Court’s jurisprudence; and Ilya Somin writes that a decision striking down the act would not “lead to the resuscitation of Lochner v. New York and the invalidation of a wide range of economic regulations.” Continue reading »
The petition of the day is:
Hadden v. United States
Docket: 11-1197
Issue(s): Whether the government is entitled to full reimbursement under the Medicare Secondary Payer Act, 42 U.S.C. § 1395y(b), when a beneficiary compromises a tort or other claim and recovers a reduced amount, as the court of appeals held here, or whether the government, like its beneficiary, is entitled to only a proportionate recovery, as the Eleventh Circuit has held.
Certiorari stage documents:
- Opinion below (6th Cir.)
- Petition for certiorari
- Amicus brief of Workers' Compensation Section of the State Bar of Michigan
- Amicus brief of Property Casualty Insurers Association of America et al.
- Amicus brief of DRI - The Voice of the Defense Bar
- Amicus brief of Retail Litigation Center, Inc. (forthcoming)
John Elwood reviews Monday’s relisted and held cases.
Sure, your dreams of a Facebook-funded early retirement went up in a cloud of blue-chip smoke, and you’ve been reduced to alternating status updates between “IHML” and “BIH, Zuckerberg,” but fret not: the good folks at One First Street N.E. are more than meeting market projections for relists and holds. And like the low-yield CDs of the legal world that they are, they delivered their usual tiny dividends right on time.
Analysis
If the Supreme Court had looked at the highly significant Montana campaign finance case a month ago, it would have seen a far simpler constitutional controversy — one that boiled down to the question of whether a state court must obey what the Nation’s highest court says the law is; the answer, of course, is obvious. The Court might have asked itself then: what is the quickest and simplest way to make this right? What a difference a month — and a raft of legal talent – might make.
A stack of new legal filings last Friday amounted to an argument that the Court would not be true to itself or to its nobler traditions if it acts swiftly out of pique at the Montana Supreme Court — in effect, a not-so-subtle suggestion that the Court would put itself very much more on the defensive for having acted rashly. If that argument works, it could set the stage for a thorough new airing of money in politics by the Justices — next year, in a supposedly calmer, non-campaign atmosphere.
On Monday, the Court decided Taniguchi v. Kan Pacific Saipan, holding that the cost of document translation is not a taxable cost under the federal cost-shifting statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1920. In an opinion by Justice Samuel Alito, the Court ruled – by a vote of six to three – that the Ninth Circuit had it wrong when it ruled that 28 U.S.C. § 1920(6)’s allowance for “compensation of interpreters” includes translation of written documents, and not only what everyone agrees that provision comfortably covers: oral interpretation, such as in-court interpretation of testimony in a language other than English. Interestingly, it wasn’t just the Ninth Circuit that had it wrong. Most federal courts that had addressed the question had ruled that subsection 1920(6) covers document translation, and, as the dissent pointed out, awards for those costs have been commonplace in the district courts.
Rhode Island’s governor, relying on his state’s opposition to the death penalty, asked the Supreme Court on Wednesday to bar the transfer of a state prison inmate to the federal government for prosecution on bank robbery charges that might lead to a death sentence. In a stay application (Chafee, et al., v. U.S., 11A1113), Gov. Lincoln D. Chafee was joined by the Rhode Island inmate, Jason Wayne Pleau. The request for a delay, until the case can be appealed to the Justices, was filed with Justice Stephen G. Breyer.
Monday’s opinions and orders continue to generate coverage. At this blog, Kristine Knaplund analyzes Monday’s decision in Astrue v. Capato, in which the Court unanimously held that children conceived after their father’s death qualify for Social Security survivors benefits only if state intestacy law permits them to inherit from their father; Robert Barnes of the Washington Post also covers the case. And at JURIST, Julia Zebley reports on Monday’s decision in the consolidated cases Holder v. Gutierrez and Holder v. Sawyers, in which the Court held that the position of the Board of Immigration Appeals that an alien seeking cancellation of removal must individually satisfy the requirements of 8 U.S.C. § 1229b(a) – lawful permanent resident status for at least five years and at least seven years of continuous residence in the United States after a lawful admission – rather than relying on a parent’s years of continuous residence or lawful permanent resident status is based on a permissible construction of the statute. Continue reading »
Analysis
Federal judges seem to agree that racial discrimination among voters has not yet ended in America. But they don’t agree on where — in what states — it is still a problem. And on that disagreement may hang the constitutional fate of the most successful civil rights law in U.S. history, the 1965 Voting Rights Act, when it makes another trip to the Supreme Court, very likely next Term. An already skeptical Court may have lost patience with Congress’s unwillingness – or inability — to update that law.
Three years ago, the Court sent an implied warning to Congress: unless changes are made to overcome “serious constitutional questions,” the Act might not survive a direct test. Congress would not adopt, or could not muster the votes for, any change, so the law now must stand or fall as it was written when it was last extended, in 2006. A direct test appears to be at hand. It is only a question of which test case gets to the Justices first.
The following contribution is by Kristine S. Knaplund, Professor of Law at Pepperdine University School of Law in Malibu, California. Professor Knaplund has written extensively on the legal and ethical issues that arise when children are conceived and born years after a genetic parent has died, including articles in the Arizona Law Review, Kansas Law Review, the Duke Journal of Gender Law and Policy, the Michigan Journal of Law Reform, and the ABA Real Property, Trust and Estate Law Journal. She is an Academic Fellow of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel, and serves as Vice Chair of the ABA Elder Law, Disability Planning and Bioethics Group.
Yesterday the Court issued its decision in Astrue v. Capato. In an unanimous opinion by Justice Ginsburg, the Court sided squarely with the Social Security Administration, thus giving Chevron deference to a federal agency’s interpretation for the seventh time in the past five years. The case involved two children conceived after their father’s death using his frozen sperm; their application for Social Security survivors benefits was denied on the ground that they did not qualify as his “children” because they were not entitled to inherit from him under applicable state law. The Third Circuit reversed, holding that the undisputed biological children of a deceased wage earner and his widow are the wage earner’s “children” within the meaning of the Social Security Act.
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