Yesterday’s Supreme Court decision freeing up corporate spending on politics will have, as Kevin Drum has noted, quite a few unintended consequences, including driving up the cost of television advertising. But there will be negative consequences, too, for the very corporations who are the presumed beneficiaries of the ruling. And some of them are already [...]

Toward the end of every Supreme Court term, there’s speculation about which Justices might retire.   Given his age and his relatively liberal proclivities, John Paul Stevens has naturally been at the top of the list.   A while back, it was noted that he’d only hired one clerk for the upcoming session.   Now, CBS’ Jan Crawford [...]

In a landmark decision, the Supreme Court today ruled that the right of corporations to engage in political speech, including campaign and issue advertising,  is protected by the First Amendment. AP, “Justices Block Key Part of Campaign Law” The Supreme Court threw out a 63-year-old law designed to restrain the influence of big business and [...]

In what some are viewing with irony, Antonin Scalia yesterday referenced decisions of courts in other nations in discussing how the Supreme Court should interpret an international treaty. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia practically hisses when his colleagues consult foreign law to help interpret the U.S. Constitution. But on Tuesday, Scalia found himself looking approvingly [...]

There’s quite a bit of chatter this morning about the fact that two travel bloggers of whom I’d never previously heard have  had their computers confiscated pursuant to subpoenas after publishing unclassified but sensitive TSA screening procedures.  AP’s Eileen Sullivan has the rundown: As the government reviews how an alleged terrorist was able to bring [...]

In response to the growing refrains from the Left about Joe Lieberman “holding health care hostage,” Steven Taylor observes that, “Either the votes can be mustered or they can’t. It is the way of legislating.” Or of any close decision-making process, for that matter. Sandra Day O’Connor used to “hold the Constitution hostage.”   Now, Anthony [...]

The Supreme Court is considering making the Miranda warning more explicit. The Supreme Court on Monday seemed headed toward telling police they must explicitly advise criminal suspects that their lawyer can be present during any interrogation. The arguments in front of the justices were the latest over how explicit the Miranda warning rights have to [...]

In a move that has been coming for nearly two years, Charles Johnson has issued a manifesto explaining “Why I Parted Ways With The Right.”  For those who don’t know, Johnson is the founder and principal author of Little Green Footballs, one of the oldest and most popular blogs.  He was an elder statesman in [...]

The U.S. Supreme Court has reversed a decision by the 2nd Circuit (in which Sonia Sotomayor took part) on detainee photographs. The justices sent the case back to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in Manhattan, which ruled in 2008 that the pictures should be released to the public. But at [...]

The Supreme Court hears oral argument today in Pottawattamie County v McGee, wherein they will have to decide if prosecutors have immunity from lawsuits even if they frame someone for murder. On one side of the case being argued are Iowa prosecutors who contend “there is no freestanding right not to be framed.” They are [...]

A rather bizarre case in Illinois — even by the standards of that state. For more than a decade, classes of students at Northwestern University’s journalism school have been scrutinizing the work of prosecutors and the police. The investigations into old crimes, as part of the Medill Innocence Project, have helped lead to the release [...]

Olympia Snowe and other wayward Republicans will be subject to strong persuasion but no punishment from the caucus, Senate Republican leaders tell Politico. Mitch McConnell and his deputies in the Senate Republican leadership are responding very cautiously to Olympia Snowe’s decision to become the first GOP vote for a Democratic health care reform bill. That’s [...]

A recent survey of Oklahoma public high school students found that the overwhelming majority can’t answer even simple questions about U.S. government and history. A thousand students were given 10 questions drawn from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services item bank. Candidates for U.S. citizenship must answer six questions correctly in order to become citizens. [...]

It appears that Sonia Sotomayor will be an activist judge after all. During arguments in a campaign-finance case, the court’s majority conservatives seemed persuaded that corporations have broad First Amendment rights and that recent precedents upholding limits on corporate political spending should be overruled. But Justice Sotomayor suggested the majority might have it all wrong [...]

Tomorrow, the Supreme Court is hearing a case that could overturn two recent precedents allowing the restriction of political speech by corporations for the purpose of curbing the appearance of undue influence.  There’s an excellent chance they will do so. That raises ageless questions about the role of stare decisis — the court’s custom of [...]

Though I follow a number of lawblogs, I missed a rather interesting Supreme Court decision until reading about it on the blog of entrepreneur Mark Cuban. For reasons understandable to those who follow Cuban, he has a Google alert for “prosecutorial misconduct,” which yields more results than one would like. It led him to Michael [...]

Apropos my previous post about the Chicago public employee furlough, Aaron Brazell tweets about a Maryland judge ruling that state furloughs violate the U.S. Constitution.   He links to a WaPo recap: A federal judge ruled Tuesday that Prince George’s County violated the U.S. Constitution when it furloughed 5,900 workers in the last fiscal year, [...]

Bob Dylan was on the pavement, thinking about the government. And they arrested him. Rock legend Bob Dylan was treated like a complete unknown by police in a New Jersey shore community when a resident called to report someone wandering around the neighborhood. Dylan was in Long Branch, about a two-hour drive south of New [...]

How far does the 1st Amendment go?  Hal Turner is about to find out. Internet radio host Hal Turner disliked how three federal judges rejected the National Rifle Association’s attempt to overturn a pair of handgun bans. “Let me be the first to say this plainly: These Judges deserve to be killed,” Turner wrote on [...]

While I share Michael Tomasky’s disdain for people carrying signs about “the blood of tyrants” while protesting democratically elected leaders, he goes too far here: There was an election. One guy one, another guy lost. It wasn’t disputed. It wasn’t decided by an ideologically divided Supreme Court, which gave the win to the guy who [...]

Bill Maher has a piece at HuffPo arguing that Americans are a bunch of idiots who should just shut up and let people who know what they’re talking about make decisions on tough issues like health care reform. [T]ake the health care debate we’re presently having: members of Congress have recessed now so they can [...]

Matt Yglesias cites a 15-year-old essay by Hendrick Hertzberg arguing that the filibuster is unconstitutional: It’s true that the framers did not specify that the Senate would do its normal business by simple majority vote, but that’s because it didn’t occur to them that they had to specify it, any more than it occurred to [...]

Continuing a long-running theme at his blog, Matt Yglesias laments that Senators from small states wield so much power.  The latest fuel is a NYT feature on six moderates who are supposedly the linchpins to putting together a bipartisan health care deal and who routinely hash out the details of same over snacks. [V]ast power [...]

Julian Sanchez argues that, while Sonia Sotomayor was given special consideration because she’s a Latina at various stages in her life, her case is “pretty close to the ideal of how affirmative action is supposed to work.” From a pool of highly qualified candidates, you let ethnicity act as a tiebreaker. It seems self-evident to [...]

In a 5-0 decision, the state’s highest court ordered that Al Franken be declared the winner. The Minnesota Supreme Court ruled today that Democrat Al Franken won the U.S. Senate election and said he was entitled to an election certificate that would lead to him being seated in the Senate. “Affirmed,” wrote the Supreme Court, [...]

The Supreme Court yesterday declined to hear an appeal from the MPAA, thus letting stand a lower court ruling that Cablevision’s new remote DVR technology does not constitute a “retransmission” of the programming and thus require additional fees. The new DVR service would work by storing a viewer’s recordings in computers housed at the cable [...]

The Supreme Court today agreed to consider whether the NFL is violating federal antitrust law in its exclusive licensing deal with Reebok. The court said it will hear an appeal from American Needle Inc., of Buffalo Grove, Ill., that challenges an agreement the NFL struck with Reebok International Ltd. American Needle had been one of [...]

By a slim 5-4 margin, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the white New Haven firefighters whose promotions were denied because not enough non-whites passed the promotion exam.  Among those ruling the other way on the lower court was a certain wise Latina. The Supreme Court ruled Monday that white firefighters in New Haven, [...]

The events in Honduras today have been some of the more dramatic in recent Latin American (and especially Central American) politics. The events are certainly of relevance to the democratic evolution of Honduras. Dave Schuler asked that I post a few comments given my academic focus on Latin America. If anyone is interested in the [...]

The Supreme Court sided with a 13-year-old honor student suspended after she was strip searched for Advil. The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a school’s strip search of an Arizona teenage girl accused of having prescription-strength ibuprofen was illegal. In an 8-1 ruling, the justices said school officials violated the law with their search of [...]

Having stolen Pete Davis‘ post title, the least I can do is attempt to answer his question: the U.S. Postal Service was established by the Constitution.  I’d be interested if any constitutional lawyers think the Postal Service could be dismantled without amending the Constitution. Well, IANA(C)L but am almost certain that nothing in the Constitution [...]

The Supreme Court has ruled (a 5-4 decision) that a person who has been convicted of a crime, and when there is DNA evidence present that could conclusively prove innocence or guilt, there is no Constitutional right to have the DNA tested or requirement for the prosecutors to hand the evidence over to the convict’s [...]

It is a truism that well-intentioned attempts by government to curb bad behavior often spawn unforeseen and perhaps worse behavior. A classic, recurring example of that is the now-35-year-old effort to curb the influence of campaign contributions on politics, which has spawned the use of PACs, 527 groups, and other insidious activities far more harmful [...]

Vice President Joe Biden has a bit of a mouth problem, he just can’t shut it, and whatever he thinks tends to come tumbling out. In this case, while speaking before a Law Enforcement group Vice President Biden told the cops present that “Sotomayor has your back”. Vice President Joe Biden may have crossed the [...]

The next episode of OTB Radio, our BlogTalkRadio program, will record and air live from 7-8 Eastern Wednesday night as per usual. The special Tueday Night Marvel Team-Up with League of Ordinary Gentlemen, Conor Friedersdorf, and Dan Riehl was waylaid by technical concerns and they will instead run it solo on Thursday at 2 Eastern [...]

Gays looking to get the Supreme Court’s help in being allowed to openly serve in the military have been rebuffed. The Supreme Court on Monday turned down a challenge to the Pentagon policy forbidding gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military, granting a request by the Obama administration.  The court said it will [...]

While I think Sonia Sotomayor’s “wise Latina” line falls well short of racism and is even inarguably true given the right context (i.e., that personal experience colors one’s filtering of information) it’s still amusing to see it used against her in a clever fashion. Scott Ott weighs in with a satire piece entitled, “Sotomayor: Wise [...]

Kevin Drum notes that he’s already tired of the “kabuki” that has emerged in reaction to the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. I both agree that the process is predictable and tedious and that Sotomayor would seem obviously qualified for confirmation.  I would quibble, however, with this: Conservatives, who seem constitutionally unable [...]

In a 6-1 decision, the California Supreme Court “upheld a voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage” but it “also decided that the estimated 18,000 gay couples who tied the knot before the law took effect will stay wed,” Lisa Leff reports for AP. The 6-1 decision written by Chief Justice Ron George rejected an argument by [...]

BREAKING:  “President Barack Obama will name his nominee to replace Supreme Court Justice David Souter at 10:15 am ET on Monday, an adviser told NBC News.” UPDATE:  CNN reports, “President Obama has chosen federal Judge Sonia Sotomayor as his nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court, two sources told CNN today. Obama’s nominee will replace retiring [...]

There’s a shocking lack of diversity on the U.S. Supreme Court, WaPo staff writer Robert Barnes points out. There hasn’t been a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant put forward in the five nominations since Justice David H. Souter came to the court in 1990. With Souter’s impending departure, the demographic will be seriously underrepresented on a court [...]

Responding to the recent calls for President Obama to replace David Souter with someone with “political experience” rather than going 9 for 9 with prior Courts of Appeal judges, Orin Kerr comes up with the ideal career path for a Supreme Court Justice: First, it would be very helpful for the candidate to have a [...]

I had occasion to stumble on a post from the OTB archives, “Democrats Threaten to Filibuster Unnamed Court Nominee,” written on September 25, 2005.  What’s interesting in hindsight is how fundamentally the landscape has changed.  Not only is it Republicans now about to be in a position to try to avert a person they deem [...]

Some loosely related threads seen on memeorandum this morning: California’s Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger allows as to how he could conceivably endorse a Democrat as his successor — while insisting that he will himself remain a Republican Texas Republican Congressman Joe Barton likened the Bowl Championship Series, which determines college football’s top division’s national championship, [...]

Apparently, the Supreme Court is leaning towards letting school administrators do just that. The case in question is a about a girl who was strip searched by school officials when she was 13 years old in eighth grade. The school officials were acting on a tip from another girl who had been caught with prescription [...]

One of the Supreme Court’s most anticipated decisions this term is likely to deal with the constitutionality of part of one of the landmark laws of the 20th century, the Voting Rights Act of 1965; this may be the most important of a series of cases the court will tackle this term considering civil rights. [...]

Ben Smith quotes lawyer A.B. Culvahouse explaining legal obstacles to Joe Lieberman’s having been John McCain’s running mate. “Five states have sore loser statutes … [making] it very difficult for someone who’s not a member of the Republican Party to become the vice presidential nominee if they only switch parties to become a Republican shortly [...]

Gerard Magliocca points to evidence that Justice David Souter is about to retire from the Supreme Court: Above the Law is reporting that Justice Souter has not hired clerks for the upcoming Term. While he is typically the last Justice to hire clerks, this is late even for him. This fact, combined with what I’m [...]

Yesterday’s ruling by a three-judge panel that “The overwhelming weight of the evidence indicates that the Nov. 4, 2008, election was conducted fairly, impartially and accurately” and that Al Franken “received the highest number of votes legally cast” and “is therefore entitled to receive the certificate of election” should, but likely won’t, put an end [...]

Arizona State has invited President Obama to be its commencement speaker but has decided not to award him an honorary degree, Dawn Teo reports for HuffPo. Universities typically confer an honorary degree on commencement speakers, particularly those who have reached the pinnacle of their career or achieved the top of their field. Arizona State University [...]