[UPDATE]: On February 25, 2009, I filed a brief as amicus curiae in this case. You can find it here.
Last week, the court granted review in Ricci v. DeStefano.
In 2003, the city of New Haven attempted to promote a number of firefighters to the ranks of captain and lieutenant based on a number of [...]

The Supreme Court granted review today in Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District Number One v. Michael Mukasey, a case revolving around whether or not there is still sufficient justification to force municipalities to have their districts pre-approved by Congress.
§5 of the Voting Rights Act, now 42 U.S.C 1973(c), forces certain ‘covered jurisdictions’ to have voting [...]

With the release today of Altria Group v. Good, the court has left several high-profile cases yet to be decided. Bear in mind that over the last few terms the average number of days between argument and decision has hovered around 90 and, with only 70 days having passed since the start of the term, [...]

Now, for Heller: Affirmed, quite naturally. Wow! It came down 5-4, with none of the traditionally ‘liberal’ Justices joining the pro-gun rights majority. Scalia must have written an incredibly strong majority opinion and the ‘conservatives’ must have been unwilling to budge.
Opinions are straight 5-4, one majority and two dissent. No concurring, partials. I’m surprised [...]

Justice Kennedy’s majority in Kennedy v. Louisiana is an interesting, albeit frustrating one. He sets out to splatter every argument he can against the wall in the hopes that at least a few will stick. Whether or not he succeeds is up to the reader and more importantly, future generations of Supreme Court Justices who [...]

US v. Williams (opinion) stole the spotlight amongst last week’s decided cases and for good reason. The court narrowed scope of the PROTECT Act and upheld its basic tenants against first amendment claims. Another case, US v. Ressam, struck me as being particularly interesting.
The facts of Ressam (opinion) aren’t terribly complex. Ahmed Ressam tried to [...]

On March 31, the Court accepted cert. in Pleasant Grove v. Summum. The case revolves around the right of a Summum group to erect a monument of the Seven Aphorisms in a City Park in Pleasant Grove, Utah that already has a similarly-sized monument to the Ten Commandments.
A park in Pleasant Grove, Utah features [...]

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 Court released a slew of cases last week, five to be specific, and the vast majority of press coverage has been focused on Riegel v. Medtronics. Riegel isn’t bad, but the case that really drew my attention was Danforth v. Minnesota.
Danforth first made news (within the overly excited blogosphere) when the Justices turn an [...]

Oral Arguments took place this morning in Boumediene v. Bush and its sister case, Al-Odah v. US. Because of the heightened interest in the case, the Supreme Court opted to expedite the delivery of the audio recording and it was broadcast on C-Span by 11:50EST, less than an hour after the arguments concluded.
The arguments went [...]