Every post published in June 2015, most recent first.
Deborah W. Denno is the Arthur A. McGivney Professor of Law at Fordham University School of Law. “Welcome to Groundhog Day,” begins Justice Antonin Scalia in his concurrence in Glossip v. Gross, a narrow five-to-four opinion in which the Court held that three death-row inmates failed to establish
Steven D. Schwinn is an Associate Professor of Law at The John Marshall Law School in Chicago. In early 2014, Oklahoma had a problem. The state planned to execute Clayton Lockett with a three-drug lethal injection cocktail, but its sources for its critical first drug dried up.
Kent Scheidegger is the attorney for the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, which filed an amicus brief in support of the respondents. “[I]s it appropriate for the judiciary to countenance what amounts to a guerilla war against the death penalty …?” Justice Samuel Alito asked at oral argument two months ago in Glossip v. Gross.
Yesterday morning the Court issued its final three opinions of the Term. Mark Walsh provided us with a “view” of the proceedings from the Courtroom, while Ilya Shapiro weighs in on the decisions at Cato at Liberty.
Reacting to an undoubted invitation by the Supreme Court to raise the issue, a group of California public school teachers on Tuesday persuaded the Justices to review the constitutionality of requiring government workers to pay fees to support any labor union activity.
[Updated 7/5/2015: Several pages have been updated to reflect changes to the Stat Pack. The links below will send you to the updated Stat Pack.]
Twenty-four hours after giving constitutional backing for Arizona’s use of an independent commission to draw new election district maps for its members of Congress, the Supreme Court on Tuesday took on a case complaining that the same state agency wrongly used race and partisanship in crafting state legislative district boundaries.
Fifteen years ago, Arizona voters took a drastic step to deal with partisanship in drawing the lines for federal congressional districts: they passed an amendment to the state constitution that transferred the redistricting power from the state legislature, which had previously controlled it, to an independent commission.
By the time the majority opinion was filed last Friday in Johnson v. United States, it was hardly a surprise that the Court struck down the “residual clause” of the federal Armed Career Criminal Act as unconstitutionally vague (as previewed here and here).
Court-related coverage and commentary are dominated by Friday’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, in which the Court struck down state bans on same-sex marriage and the recognition thereof.