Every post published in November 2016, most recent first.
Yesterday’s oral argument in Beckles v. United States found the justices wrestling with retroactivity and vagueness in the context of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines.
Today the first-argued case of the term yielded the first full opinion of the term.
A figure from the patent involved in the case.
In overviews of the Supreme Court’s current term, the conventional wisdom is that the court is mostly shying away from controversial cases and topics, as it waits to learn when it will have a ninth justice and who that justice will be.
Today’s argument docket features Jennings v. Rodriguez, a class-action due-process challenge to the prolonged detention of immigrants. Kevin Johnson previewed the case for this blog.
In its conference of December 2, 2016, the court will consider petitions involving issues such as whether the Uniformed Services Former Spouses’ Protection Act pre-empts a state court’s order directing a veteran to indemnify a former spouse for a reduction in the former spouse’s portion of the
Czyzewski v. Jevic Holding Corp., set for argument on December 7, involves a challenge to the increasingly fashionable use of “structured dismissal” to resolve Chapter 11 bankruptcy cases. Structured-dismissal practice is unlikely to emerge from the case unscathed.
The transcript in Jennings v. Rodriguez is here.
Today, the court will hear oral argument in Moore v. Texas, which asks whether Texas can rely on an outdated standard in determining whether a defendant’s intellectual disability precludes him from being executed. Amy Howe previewed the case for this blog.
It was, as attorney Clifford Sloan – who represents Texas death-row inmate Bobby James Moore – said, a “vitally important, life-or-death” issue: Does the scheme that Texas uses to determine whether an inmate is intellectually disabled, and therefore cannot be executed, violate the Constitution?