Every post published in October 2015, most recent first.
Next Tuesday’s argument in Lockhart v. United States promises to be a prime-time event for statutory interpretation geeks. Indeed, one could tout this as “The Battle of the Canons” – the exchange of volleys between two venerable canons of statutory construction.
The process of selecting juries to try criminal cases has become, at least in high-profile cases, a science of human profiling. Both sides — prosecutors and defense lawyers — try to make educated guesses about how potential jurors may react if seated, at times using behavioral experts to improve the guessing.
Today the Justices meet for their October 30 Conference. The petitions for review that they will consider include several challenges to the government’s accommodation for non-profits that object to providing their female employees with health insurance that includes access to birth control.
This afternoon the Court issued an initial group of orders from its October 30 Conference, adding one new case to its merits docket for the Term. The Justices had considered Voisine v. United States at two earlier Conferences before granting review today.
Instead of identifying an exhaustive list of every state and federal criminal offense for which a conviction renders a non-citizen subject to removal (or ineligible for relief from removal), Congress has historically identified categories of convictions that will trigger removability and left it to
The November sitting begins next Monday, November 2. In the ABA Journal, Mark Walsh previews the second case that day: Spokeo v. Robins, in which the Court will consider whether a Virginia man can maintain his lawsuit against the Internet database that, he alleges, published inaccurate information about him in violation of the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
October was an active month for both the current and retired Justices. On October 6, retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor made an appearance with her brother at the Arizona Opera Book Club to share stories about their childhood and promote the memoir that they co-wrote, Lazy B: Growing Up on a Cattle Ranch in the American Southwest.
Briefly: In The National Law Journal (subscription or registration required), Marcia Coyle reports on recent comments by Justice Anthony Kennedy at Harvard Law School, noting that the Justice “may have revealed a source of his concern and dislike of solitary confinement.” At Constitution Daily,
Montanile v Board of Trustees of the National Elevator Industry Health Benefit Plan presents a fact situation so pedestrian it is remarkable that the answer could be unclear: when someone with health insurance is injured in an automobile accident, does he have to reimburse the insurer for medical expenses covered by the plan if he later recovers from the other driver?
Briefly: NPR‘s Nina Totenberg reports on the upcoming release of Notorious RBG, “a highly illustrated nonfiction book about the iconic rise of” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, “who she is, how she got to the Supreme Court, and why young women want to be like her.” In The Washington Post, Robert Barnes