In Scott v. Harris, the Court held 8-1 that when a car chase poses a “substantial and immediate risk” of injury to others, a police officer was acting reasonably when he terminated the chase by bumping the driver off the road. Justice Stevens didn’t agree with the Court and included this juicy bit in his [...]

Earlier this morning, the Supreme Court held in Herring v. United States that non-systematic negligence by police officers fall within the scope of the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule. I wrote about the case after oral arguments here.
The decision of the conservative majority to significantly expand the scope of the good-faith exception to [...]

Just last week in ACLU v. NSA, the sixth circuit Court of Appeals struck down the ACLU’s suit against the NSA’s warrantless-wiretapping authority. In a 2-1 decision, two concurring opinions were published meaning that not one of the judges agreed with another’s methodology. Lets take a look at this case and its potential implications.
The authority [...]

The court today handed down decisions in 3 more cases, including Powerex v. Reliant Energy- a case that I blogged about here (and a little here). The court has further put off the highly anticpated school cases as well as the Bong Hits 4 Jesus case. Interesting. The court is expected to release one [...]

This dollar bill analysis brought to you by an otherwise insignificant case:
Patdown produced a lighter and the officer saw a straw protruding from the pocket. In the watch pocket was a folded dollar bill. Despite the fact the officer knew that dollar bills could be folded and contain drugs, the inherently legal nature of the [...]

After a disappointingly slow week, the Court handed down five opinions, one Per Curiam reversal, and a marginally interesting orders list today. I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this, but a per curiam opinion is usually issued when the Court rejects a case based on procedural grounds and chooses to deny certiorari. Per Curiam decisions [...]