Scott Dodson is the Associate Dean for Research and the James Edgar Hervey Chair in Litigation at UC Hastings College of the Law. The basic separation-of-powers model allocates lawmaking power to the legislative branch, enforcement power to the executive branch, and interpretive and adjudicative power to the judicial branch.
In a casebook-worthy unanimous opinion by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in Sprint Communications, Inc. v. Jacobs, the Court clearly defined the scope of the Younger doctrine’s outer bounds.
At oral argument in Sprint Communications, Inc. v. Jacobs, the Supreme Court appeared ready to draw some lines to cabin the Younger abstention doctrine.
Scott Dodson is a Professor of Law at University of California Hastings College of the Law.
The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (“AEDPA”) imposes a one-year limitations period for filing a federal habeas petition. If the state recognizes that a habeas petitioner’s petition for relief may be untimely but deliberately waives its limitations defense, may an appellate court nevertheless decide the issue sua sponte?
Yesterday the Court heard oral arguments in Wood v. Milyard. The issue in the case is whether, when a state neither challenges nor concedes the timeliness of a state habeas petition, an appellate court can raise and decide the issue on its own. Three primary themes ran throughout the oral argument.
When Patrick Wood, a Colorado state prisoner, was too late in seeking federal habeas-corpus relief, the state told the federal district court that it neither challenged nor conceded the timeliness of Wood’s petition.
Scott Dodson, of William & Mary Law School, opens our class action symposium.
Today the Court issued its decision in Henderson v. Shinseki (No. 09-1036).
On Monday, the Court heard oral arguments in Henderson v. Shinseki.