The Court is on winter recess until the Justices reconvene for the Conference of February 17. Our “Petitions to watch” for that Conference is here.
The February sitting begins February 21.
The Obama Administration asked the Supreme Court on Friday to expand by a half-hour — to a total of six hours — the time allowed for oral arguments in late March on the constitutionality of the new federal health care law. In a ten-page motion, U.S. Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli, Jr., said the added time would be provided for the opening arguments on Monday, March 26, on whether the challenges to the new individual insurance-purchase mandate are barred by the federal Anti-Injunction Act, a law designed to protect the government’s power to collect tax revenue. The motion also suggested ways to divide up the three days of argument among the parties, but noted that there is some disagreement over that part of the motion.
With the Court still in its mid-term recess, today’s clippings focus on the activities of Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor.
The AP’s Mark Sherman (via the Traverse City (Mich.) Record-Eagle) reports that Justice Ginsburg has returned from her visit to Egypt and Tunisia, a trip that was sponsored by the State Department. Speaking to a crowd at Cairo University, the Justice told students she was inspired by the protests that led to the end of Hosni Mubarak’s regime. The ABA Journal’s Molly McDonough also has coverage.
At the Daily Report, Jonathan Ringel reports that Justice Sotomayor made a guest appearance on Sesame Street Thursday night. In the skit, the Justice heard arguments in the case of Baby Bear v. Goldilocks. Continue reading »
The Supreme Court will conclude its oral arguments for the current Term with the major case on a state’s power to pass laws to control undocumented immigrants living in the state — Arizona v. United States (docket 11-182) — on April 25. The Court on Friday released the April calendar, listing cases to be heard in the final scheduled sitting of October Term 2011. This is a relatively thin calendar, with arguments heard only in the mornings; each session is limited to one hour. The sessions begin at 10 a.m. No other cases will be heard this Term unless something arises as an emergency.
The schedule of cases, including a brief summary of the issues at stake, follows the jump.
At its February 17, 2012 Conference, the Court will consider such issues as the burden of persuasion for warrantless searches of residences, the use of a defendant’s pre-arrest silence, grandparent visitation, whether human genes are patentable, and exhaustion under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. This edition of “Petitions to watch” features petitions raising issues that Tom has determined to have a reasonable chance of being granted, although we post them here without consideration of whether they present appropriate vehicles in which to decide those issues. This list will be updated to reflect any relisted cases when that information becomes available. John Elwood’s latest “Relist (and hold) watch” is available here. The full list of our “Petitions to watch” for the February 17 Conference is here. A complete list also follows the jump.
This is another post in an ongoing series analyzing statistical trends at the Court. For a more complete look at the statistics that we collect on the Court, you can find all of our up-to-date charts and graphs here.
Pace of Opinions. The Court has released opinions at a blistering pace through the first half of October Term 2011. Since John Roberts became the Chief Justice in 2005, the Court has not released more than 19 merits opinions through the end of the January sitting. This year, however, the Court has released 21, including blockbusters United States v. Jones and Perry v. Perez – with the latter taking only 42 days from the Court’s notation of probable jurisdiction to a decision on the merits. The Court is likely to release a mid-major, Florence v. Board of Freeholders, during the February or March sittings. Continue reading »
The petition of the day is:
Johnson v. United States
Docket: 11-833
Issue(s): Whether 18 U.S.C. § 1958(a), which makes it a crime to travel in or use a facility in interstate or foreign commerce “with intent that a murder be committed” for money or something of pecuniary value, or to conspire to do so, requires that the interstate activity be done for the purpose of facilitating or making easier the commission of the underlying crime of murder?
Certiorari stage documents:
The Ninth Circuit Court on Thursday barred the public release of a videotape recording of the historic trial two years ago on the constitutionality of California’s Proposition 8 — a voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage in the state. The three-judge panel, in a unanimous ruling, found that the trial judge had promised both sides in the case that “the recording would not be publicly broadcast” and it said that the parties were entitled to rely upon that promise. The result is to bar public broadcast of the visual record of the three-week trial held in January 2010.
The decision did not resolve any other issue in the case, including the question of whether Proposition 8 is valid under the federal Constitution, and whether the trial judge should have taken himself out of the case because he is a gay man with a long-term male partner he might one day wish to marry. The same Circuit Court panel has those issues under study, and is expected to decide them shortly, although no timing for those decisions has been announced.
Although the Justices are in their mid-term recess, coverage of the Court continues to focus on last week’s decision in United States v. Jones. Writing for Fox News, Robert Samuel of NewsCore reports on the lack of consensus regarding whether the Court’s decision in Jones requires authorities to obtain warrants before attaching GPS devices to vehicles. Orin Kerr of the Volokh Conspiracy responds to Samuel’s article, arguing that the text of the Jones opinion and the Fourth Amendment’s “automobile exception” indicate that the Court’s decision in Jones does not impose a GPS warrant requirement. Continue reading »
The first ruling by the Ninth Circuit Court on California’s controversial ban on same-sex marriage — but not an ultimate ruling on the ban’s constitutionality — will be released Thursday morning, the Circuit Court announced Wednesday. Coming out at 1 p.m. Washington time (10 a.m. in San Francisco), this will be a decision on whether the courts will release, for public broadcast and public viewing in general, the videotapes made of the historic federal trial on the ban known as “Proposition 8.”
More Posts: Older Posts
