Details on today’s orders and opinions
on Dec 12, 2011 at 11:00 am
This morning, the Court granted four petitions; two of those were consolidated for one hour of oral argument. (The Court also called for the views of the Solicitor General in three cases, two of which present similar issues. Details on today’s granted cases and CVSGs will shortly follow the jump.) These grants are in addition to Friday’s orders (which Lyle covered last week), in which the Court agreed to review the constitutionality of three redistricting plans drawn up by a federal court for the Texas legislature and the state’s delegation to the U.S. House of Representatives.
The Court issued two unanimous opinions, one in an argued case. Justice Kagan wrote the opinion in Judulang v. Holder, holding that the policy used by the Board of Immigration Appeals to determine whether a resident alien is eligible to ask the Attorney General for relief from deportation under a provision of the immigration laws that has been repealed is “arbitrary and capricious” under the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(A).
In addition, the Court issued a per curiam opinion in Hardy v. Cross in which it summarily reversed a decision of the Seventh Circuit in a habeas corpus case. The Justices first considered the case at their September 26 Conference, and the case had been relisted multiple times since then. The Court held that the lower court’s ruling overturning a decision of an Illinois state court was inconsistent with the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), 28 U.S.C. § 2254, which “imposes a highly deferential standard for evaluating state-court rulings and demands that state-court decisions be given the benefit of the doubt.”
Today’s granted cases:
[PETITION]11-182[/PETITION]
[PETITION]11-246[/PETITION]
[PETITION]11-247[/PETITION]
[PETITION]11-166[/PETITION]
The views of the Solicitor General have been called for in:
[PETITION]11-347[/PETITION]
[PETITION]11-336[/PETITION]
[PETITION]11-338[/PETITION]
