I have to apologize for the lack of posts over the last few days. I’ve been working on an amicus brief in Ricci v. DeStefano and I need to submit it sooner rather than later. Regardless, the Court probably won’t be handing down any opinions until mid- to late-February. In the last three years, the [...]

The Supreme Court handed down six opinions this morning and granted review in three others. You can find the opinions here and the orders list here. The Court also released the calender for March. It will hear only one case per day for each of the six hearing days. In April, the Court will likely [...]

I’ve updated the 2008 Term Case Index to reflect today’s opinion. With the opinions issued today, the Court’s total number of written opinions comes to 15, but that takes into account the 3 per curiam opinions that were decided without being docketed for oral arguments. The Court will likely be done accepting cases for this [...]

The Supreme Court today refused to grant cert. in Mukasey v. ACLU, challenging the Child Online Protection Act of 1998. After several trips to the Supreme Court, the District Court most recently struck the law down for being impermissibly vague and not at all narrowly tailored to meet a compelling interest. The District Court found [...]

As expected, the Supreme Court handed down several opinions today. Waddington v. Sarausad

The Supreme Court has long been criticized for poorly patrolling its lower courts for circuit splits. At least recently, the Supreme Court has issued relatively few summary judgements and summary reversals to clarify its recent decisions before they grow out of hand. The Court today did just that when they summarily reversed a decision of [...]

The Supreme Court released a Per Curiam opinion in Spears v. US clarifying its position on the crack/cocaine ratio that it took last year in Kimbrough v. US (2007). The Court ruled that district courts may “categorically disagree” with the advisory 100:1 crack/power cocaine ratio and may choose at will to implement a new standard [...]

There isn’t much to be said about today’s flubbed oath that hasn’t been said already. Jan Crawford Greenburg points out that an oath of office flub isn’t unprecedented: It’s worth pointing out that Chief Justice William Howard Taft, who had been President himself, also flubbed the oath when he was swearing in Herbert Hoover in [...]

The Supreme Court Opinion Line is reporting that: “We expect to release orders and opinions on Wednesday, January 21.” Usually the opinion line simply says: “The next day for possible opinions is ____.” I’m not sure I’d read too much into it, but the Court was expected to hand down opinions on Wednesday regardless.

Marty Lederman, known to many as one of the most insightful legal bloggers on the ‘net, will begin work immediately in the Office of Legal Council in the Obama administration. From 1994 to 2002, he served as Attorney Advisor in the OLC and he left in 2002 to take up a teaching position at Georgetown [...]