The only real suspense about D.C. v. Heller was 1)how exactly the right to bear arms was defined and 2)what the lineup would be. The D.C. gun ban was clearly doomed. Scalia writing the lead opinion made a broader coalition less likely, and indeed the...
Supreme Court
In the hubbub over Kennedy & Exxon today, little attention has been paid to Giles v. California, a case on which I worked (for the record, my SCOTUS record is.
Today's decision in Kennedy v. Louisiana is a fairly typical Eighth Amendment case. The relevant textual language -- "nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted" -- can evidently accommodate multiple outcomes.
In a 5-4 opinion written by Kennedy, the Court has ruled that the Eight Amendment makes the death penalty unconstitutional in cases where the defendant did not intend to cause death. More when I have a chance to fully read the opinion.
Given the credible assumption that Scalia will be writing the Court's likely-to-be-a-landmark 2nd Amendment opinion in Heller, Mike O'Shea claims that this is "great news for those who are mainly.
I have an article up at TAP about some of the implications of last week's Supreme Court landmark. One important thing is that progressives shouldn't cede the national security component.
From Dahlia Lithwick's recap of the Boumediene decision:Scalia points to the 30 detainees released from Guantanamo鈥攂y an order of the Bush administration, not a court, it should be noted鈥攚ho have allegedly "returned to the battlefield." One detonated a suicide bomb in Iraq in May. Scalia...
Souter, concurring in Boumediene: It is in fact the very lapse of four years from the time Rasul put everyone on notice that habeas process was available to Guantanamo prisoners,.
The Supreme Court today held 5-4 that Guantanamo detainees have a right to habeas corpus and that the procedures that Congress put into place with the Detainee Treatment Act (DTA).
Patterico objects to an LA Times editorial asserting that McCain will appoint justices who share his views that Roe v. Wade is wrong and should be overturned. Patterico argues that McCain has said that he would appoint judges like Alito and Roberts, who have declined...
Publius has a more optimistic take on last week's civil rights enforcement decisions, in which (unusually in a major case) Alito and Roberts broke with Thomas and Scalia and (with.
The Supreme Court denies cert to an appeal by Major League Baseball seeking to overrule an 8CA opinion that MLB's attempt to stop fantasy league operators from using their statistics.