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 [...]