DailyWrit

The Supreme Court today ruled 6-2 in New Jersey v. Delaware that neither New Jersey nor Delaware have exclusive rights to construct certain structures in their bordering river.
Article VII of the 1905 Compact, we hold,did not secure to New Jersey exclusive jurisdiction over allriparian improvements commencing on its shores.2 The parties’ own conduct, since […]

Opinio Juris has rather extensive coverage of today’s Medellin decision. I’ve spent the last hour plowing through most of it and I can say that it is both insightful and extensive.

After a cursory glance of the opinion in Medellin v. Texas (here), it looks like the Court largely sidestepped one of the major questions in the case. The Court appears to have focused primarily on the international law portion of the debate at the demise of solving the federalist issue. President Bush had declared in […]

The Supreme Court today released its opinion in Medellin v. Texas.
The Court ruled 6-3, in an opinion written by the Chief Justice, that the ICC’s decision in Avena was not valid federal law. The Court was sure to reenforce, however, that “Indeed, we agree with Medellín that, as a general matter, ‘an agreement to abide […]

The Supreme Court heard three cases today, two in the morning and one in the afternoon. Hearing three cases in a day was a normal occurance back in the day (80s) but has now become a rather uncommon occurrence.
This is the first time this term that the Court has heard three cases in one […]

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting op-ed this weekend on state judicial elections.
Lloyd Karmeier, the winner of a $9.3 million campaign for the Illinois Supreme Court in 2004, was supported by $350,000 in direct contributions from employees, lawyers and others directly involved with the insurer State Farm and/or its then pending appeal, and […]

Medellin (docket, questions presented, oral arguments, petitioner’s brief) is without a doubt one of the most anticipated opinions of the year.
Medellin was argued on October 10, 2007, making it one of the oldest cases still being decided. As of today, it has been nearly 160 days since Medellin’s oral arguments and last year, the […]

The Supreme Court today released an opinion in Snyder v. Louisiana.
Justice Alito filed a majority opinion with six of his colleagues and Justice Thomas penned a dissent that was joined by Justice Scalia.
The Court held in Snyder that a prosecutor who strikes all of the black jurors from a panel using his preemptory challenges […]

An old friend of mine gave me a call yesterday and timidly asked if he could write for the blog. Of course I told him that he was always welcome but it reminded me to make it very clear that this website has an open invitation to anyone who is interested in the Court and […]

The Court just posted the transcript for Heller on its website here. You can find the audio on C-SPAN’s website here.
More analysis to come.

The Court today handed down an opinion in Washington State Grange. Justice Thomas penned a majority opinion that upheld the right of a candidate to ‘declare’ a ‘party preference’ against that parties opposition.
Justice Scalia wrote a dissent and was joined by Justice Kennedy.

The Supreme Court issued an orders list today and accepted 8 new cases for the OT08 docket. That brings the Court’s tally to a whopping tally of 19, and as Jason Harrow points out over at SCOTUSblog, it took the Court until June last year to fill the current docket to that level.
The recent surge […]

The Supreme Court today granted cert. in FOX v. FCC, a case revolving around the use of ‘fleeting expletives’ on national TV. Jan Crawford Greenburg has some wonderful analysis on the case on her ABC blog here. She quoted from Miguel Estrada’s (yes, that one) brief for NBC and I just had to reproduce it […]

The always-insightful New York Times Magazine has an interesting article on the Court entitled “Supreme Court Inc.” Jeffery Rosen takes a look into the Court to determine why it has become so receptive to big business and comes to some pretty interesting, if not particularly unexpected conclusions.
Though the current Supreme Court has a well-earned […]

Justice Ginsburg let her true feelings about drug companies slip during oral arguments in Warner-Lambert Co. v. Kent:
JUSTICE GINSBURG: And so the State of Michigan has said: Drug dealers — I’m sorry — drug sellers —
(Laughter.)
That is her first ‘joke’ of the term (per my calculations.)