Today’s Opinion and Order List
The Court issued one opinion today in an argued case, described in greater detail in Lyle’s post here.
The case is No. 05-502, Brigham City v. Stuart, in which the Court reversed and remanded the judgment of the Utah Supreme Court in a unanimous opinion by the Chief Justice.
Justice Stevens filed a concurrence that begins with these intriguing paragraphs:
This is an odd flyspeck of a case. The charges that have been pending against respondents for the past six years are minor offenses-intoxication, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, and disorderly conduct-two of which could have been proved by evidence that was gathered by the responding officers before they entered the home. The maximum punishment for these crimes ranges between 90 days and 6 months in jail. And the Court’s unanimous opinion restating well-settled rules of federal law is so clearly persuasive that it is hard to imagine the outcome was ever in doubt.Under these circumstances, the only difficult question is which of the following is the most peculiar: (1) that the Utah trial judge, the intermediate state appellate court, and the Utah Supreme Court all found a Fourth Amendment violation on these facts; (2) that the prosecution chose to pursue this matter all the way to the United States Supreme Court; or (3) that this Court voted to grant the petition for a writ of certiorari.
Here is today’s Orders List, which Lyle discussed in greater detail here. The Court invited the Solicitor General to file a brief expressing the views of the United States in No. 05-1284, Watson v. Philip Morris Cos., in which the question presented by the petition is whether a private actor doing no more than complying with federal regulation is a “person acting under a federal officer” for the purpose of 28 U.S.C. § 1442(a)(1), entitling the actor to remove to federal court a civil action brought in state court under state law.
Justice Stevens’ concurrence is really a restatement of his long-standing disagreement with Michigan v. Long, that the Supreme Court can and should take a criminal procedure case when a state court decision in favor of the defendant is ambiguous whether it relies on the state or federal constitution.
If one takes Long as given, there is nothing peculiar about the decision of the prosecution to seek certiorari or the decision of the Court to grant it. The state court’s erroneous decision could have endangered victims of domestic violence in future cases by causing police to refrain from entering until assault escalates to major violence, possibly homicide. In addition, the objective/subjective split resolved by the Court’s opinion has importance far beyond the misdemeanor charges in this case.
The implication in Justice Stevens’ opinion that the Court should not grant certiorari in minor controversies that resolve important questions of law is what is peculiar. Surely he knows better.
Comment by Kent Scheidegger — May 22, 2006 @ 11:33 am
I seem to recall that Justice Stevens issued a concurrence in a denial of cert. from a Ninth Circuit case a few years ago in which he said he agreed with the denial of cert. because the result of the case was to toss a long sentence for gang recruitment. Stevens explicitly stated that the denial of cert. was not to be construed as approving the law as stated in the lower court.
Could it be that Stevens cares more about the result of a particular case, as it impacts the parties themselves, than the rest of the Justices?
Stevens’ comment about the prosecutors appealing the decision up to the Supreme Court is somewhat strange. It is abundantly clear, as Kent notes, that this decision has real world ramifications for victims of domestic violence. And the clarification of the law here is helpful, as some courts, as noted in the opinion, had gone a bit astray.
I guess the real question here is why this case was not simply reversed per curiam.
Comment by federalist — May 22, 2006 @ 1:44 pm