Nice to see the Second Circuit rule correctly on the “fleeting expletive” issue the Supreme Court dodged in a sometimes embarrassing opinion by alleged First Amendment absolutist Antonin Scalia.
Tag: civil liberties
The Supreme Court today held that the Second Amendment — as recently redefined in D.C. v. Heller — applies to the states and not just the federal government, which will almost certainly re
Even more so than the other major opinion release by the Supreme Court on Thursday, the outcome of Doe v. Reed was no surprise to anyone who witnessed the oral argument. The question at issue was whet
It’s a good thing that the Supreme Court limited the application of the notoriously abuse-inviting “honest services” anti-fraud provision today. Skilling and Black aren’t sympathetic claimants, and the ruling will be good news for a variety of other assholes, but that’s the same trap that leads to the erosion of civil liberties for people with […]
Deciding an appalling case in which a 17-year old was given life without parole for a violating parole, the Supreme Court held today that life-without-parole sentences for juvenile offenders violate t
What Serwer, Yglesias, and Steve all said. If the administration is really going to go with a military tribunal for KSM, it’s bad on the merits and bad politics. One could hold out some optimism
You may remember the case in which the Texas sentenced a man to death after a trial in which the judge and prosecutor were literally in bed together, and the state’s abominable appellate courts created a series of transparent procedural Catch-22s to insulate the state from its gross violation of due process. Earlier in the […]
For the second time this week, the Supreme Court issued a ruling applying its famous Miranda ruling. A lower court had ruled that because two years had elapsed between a suspect first invoking his rig
Some thoughts on the Miranda-application ruling handed down today.
People arguing that civilian trials are never appropriate for terrorist suspects are arguing from a position well to the right of the Bush administration (at least the 2006 version.) And if you have less respect for due process than the Bush DOJ…I think this point makes itself.
Both Adam Liptak and Lyle Denniston see, after Tuesday’s oral arguments, a strong cross-ideological consensus (excluding John Paul Stevens) that the “honest services” statute often u
This gets it right. Obviously, trying to pose as defenders of the rule of law when you believe that the government needs to be doing a lot more arbitrary detention and torture is going to lead you to