SCOTUS for law students (sponsored by Bloomberg Law): Confronting the Sixth...
Few issues have more deeply divided the Supreme Court in recent years than the meaning of the “Confrontation Clause” of the Sixth Amendment. At first glance, the Confrontation Clause does not seem very...
View ArticleSCOTUS for law students (sponsored by Bloomberg Law): The Court’s shrinking...
The Supreme Court is shrinking. Not the building or the number of Justices. No, the Court’s docket is declining, both the number of petitions filed and the number of cases decided. This is not a new...
View ArticleSCOTUS for law students (sponsored by Bloomberg Law): Justice Kagan’s recusals
Tomorrow morning the Court is scheduled to hear oral argument in two cases. But after the first one ends, Justice Elena Kagan will slip quietly out of the courtroom, leaving her eight colleagues...
View ArticleSCOTUS for law students (sponsored by Bloomberg Law): Handling stay applications
It has been just a little over two weeks since the Justices last heard oral arguments, but don’t mistake their absence for inactivity. Among the many things that occupy their attention when they are...
View ArticleSCOTUS for law students (sponsored by Bloomberg Law): The Supreme Court bar
It has been twenty-five years since then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist observed that there was no real bar of specialists who regularly appeared before the Supreme Court. How things have changed!...
View ArticleSCOTUS for law students (sponsored by Bloomberg Law): The retirement sweepstakes
There is a perennial fascination that flows with every new presidential administration in recent decades: when will the president get to fill a Supreme Court vacancy, and whose seat will it be? In...
View ArticleSCOTUS for law students (sponsored by Bloomberg Law): Test cases
Earlier this month, the Court announced that it would review two cases involving same-sex marriage: United States v. Windsor, a challenge to the constitutionality of the federal Defense of Marriage...
View ArticleSCOTUS for law students (sponsored by Bloomberg Law): The Court takes on DNA...
With increasing frequency, the Justices of the Supreme Court face issues of new and changing technology; these cases almost always present a challenge, especially in the field of law enforcement. Just...
View ArticleSCOTUS for law students (sponsored by Bloomberg Law): The Justices at...
When the nine Justices go out in public together to a ceremonial occasion, even celebrity-studded official Washington stops to take notice. Sometimes, as with Monday’s presidential inauguration, that...
View ArticleSCOTUS for law students (sponsored by Bloomberg Law): Recess appointments and...
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit recently sent shockwaves through the federal government by ruling that President Obama exceeded his power under Article II of the Constitution to appoint...
View ArticleSCOTUS for law students (sponsored by Bloomberg Law): Preemption again
On its face, the concept of preemption does not seem especially complicated: when federal law and state law clash, federal law prevails. This is the direct result of Article VI, section 2 of the...
View ArticleSCOTUS for law students (sponsored by Bloomberg Law): Prostitution and free...
Prostitution seems like an unlikely topic for a battle over freedom of speech, but that is precisely the focus of an important case to be argued in late April that tests the limits of the federal...
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SCOTUS for law students (sponsored by Bloomberg Law): Affirmative action in...
When the Supreme Court agreed in February 2012 to hear the University of Texas undergraduate admissions case, there was no question that the appeal set up a major test of affirmative action. But why,...
View ArticleSCOTUS for law students (sponsored by Bloomberg Law): When Justices express...
Nearly fifty years ago, comedian Bill Cosby did a very funny skit called “Oops,” about how a patient, awake under local anesthesia, might react on hearing the surgeon use that word in the operating...
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SCOTUS for law students (sponsored by Bloomberg Law): A right to remain...
Anyone who has ever watched a police drama on television knows that individuals in police custody have a right to remain silent in the face of interrogation. Actors portraying police officers may need...
View ArticleSCOTUS for law students (sponsored by Bloomberg Law): Dissenting from the bench
When a Justice reads some or all of a dissenting opinion aloud in the Courtroom, it instantly captures the attention of those present and changes the atmosphere in the small, ornate chamber. It happens...
View ArticleSCOTUS for law students (sponsored by Bloomberg Law): Prayer at government...
When may public officials open their meetings with a prayer? The Supreme Court will attempt to answer this important question in the new Term that begins on October 7. The answer may be of considerable...
View ArticleSCOTUS for law students (sponsored by Bloomberg Law): Buffer zones and free...
Tough free speech cases seem to have become a hallmark of the Roberts Court. This Term may be no exception, as the Justices consider whether a Massachusetts law creating a buffer zone to keep...
View ArticleSCOTUS for law students (sponsored by Bloomberg Law): Gambling on personal...
It is quite certain that professional gamblers Gina Fiore and Keith Gipson were not thinking about personal jurisdiction when they carried $97,000 in cash through the San Juan and Atlanta airports on...
View ArticleSCOTUS for law students (sponsored by Bloomberg Law): Why cases settle
If you want an unusual measure of the power of the Supreme Court, consider why parties to a case sometimes (although rarely) settle their dispute after the Justices have agreed to hear the appeal and...
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