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Federal Judiciary

Supreme Dicta

An eccentric look at law, politics, and the Supreme Court.

Post Frequency: 0.9/day

Last Entry: June 26, 2009 at 14:23:00

McCain and "natural-born citizen"

Posted on February 29, 2008
The New York Times has written about a topic that has been on my mind since Sen. John McCain ran for president the first time around - what does the Constitution mean when it states only a "natural-born citizen" is eligible to be president? Sen. McCain was born on a U...

South Park Cited in Appellate Court Opinion

Posted on February 27, 2008
To quote Lewis Black, I have neither the time nor the energy to make s#$% like this up.First, a very grateful hat tip to Decision of the Day.Here's a little context. The case involves a federal employee dismissed from her job for testing positive for marijuana...

Happy Birthday, Judicial Review

Posted on February 25, 2008
Yesterday marked the 205th birthday of arguably the most important Supreme Court case in history, Marbury v. Madison. The facts of the case are a bit confusing: incoming Secretary of State James Madison refused to deliver a commission issued by outgoing President John Adams, appointing William Marbury as Justice of the Peace in the District of Columbia...

Home is where the meth is

Posted on February 22, 2008
The 9th Circuit seems to have a talent for hearing bizarre cases. I might be so bold as to call them the most Dictalicious circuit in the country.The case involves a Fourth Amendment dispute over the reach of Georgia v. Randolph. In that case, the Supreme Court ruled that when two co-occupants are present and one consents to a search while the other refuses, the search is not constitutional...

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Lawsuit: Whiskey Tasted Like Urine And I Got Fired

Posted on February 21, 2008
A very grateful hat tip to Quiz Law!Lawsuit: Whiskey Tasted Like Urine And I Got FiredMan Claims Fight Over Whiskey Cost Him Promising Job CHICAGO (STNG) ? A night at the Drake Hotel is unforgettable for most but especially for Christopher T. Turner, who says a night there resulted in him losing a high-paying position, and is the reason he will probably always doing a sniff test before drinking alcohol from a hotel room's mini-bar...

Did I Stutter? I Said I Plead the Fifth

Posted on February 18, 2008
A murder suspect is being questioned by police and says, "I plead the Fifth." Obviously, under Miranda, when a suspect asserts his Fifth Amendment rights, all police questioning must cease. But it doesn't stop. The officer responded, "Plead the Fifth? What?s that?" The officer continues the questioning and the suspect's subsequent answers become the basis of a conviction...

Pitchers and Catchers Report Today!

Posted on February 15, 2008
It is altogether fitting and proper that the day after Valentine's Day is also a day of love...for baseball fans. Pitchers and catchers report to Spring Training today, meaning there are only 44 days until Opening Day.As a native Washingtonian, my favorite team is the Nationals, the team with the worst odds to win the World Series (Vegas says we are a 200 to 1 underdog)...

A Standard of Review too Far

Posted on February 11, 2008
Of course, no matter how fabulous and brilliant I am, this post is going to piss you off. Why?It's about abortion. (cue heavy dramatic music).So, I've been thinking, what's a way to reconcile the moral claims of both sides of the abortion debate within our current legal framework...

Best headline ever: Can a Sandwich Be Slandered?

Posted on February 08, 2008
I was planning on writing about this a couple weeks ago, but I got distracted. But considering today is the 12th anniversary of the CDA, I revived the post.In 2006, Quiznos created a contest encouraging ordinary people to record home video commercials of why Quiznos is better than Subway...

Chief Justice Akhil Reed Amar?

Posted on February 07, 2008
It's going to come true....if Mike Gravel is elected president. Before you point out that Gravel will never win the election, please consider that biologists are making huge progress in cross breeding birds with pigs.According to today's Yale Daily News:In a recent interview with the News after speaking to students at Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, N...

Retarded state legislation: New Mexico edition

Posted on February 06, 2008
As Justice Brandeis said, state legislatures are the "laboratories of democracy." Well in some cases, a well-intentioned laboratory can produce a Frankenstein monster. Or, more precisely, a mechanical roadrunner. Confused? Read on:SENATE MEMORIAL 40DESIGNATING THE NEW MEXICO INSTITUTE OF MINING AND TECHNOLOGY AS THE HOME OF THE MECHANICAL ROADRUNNER...

Happy Black History Month

Posted on February 04, 2008
From a Walgreen's in San Francisco. It's real, I swear.

The Highest Court in the Land

Posted on February 01, 2008
This is a short story I found recently which explains how the greatest cases in modern Supreme Court have been decided. Here's a brief excerpt:Everything you were taught about the Supreme Court and its decisions is bunk. For most of the nineteenth century and all of the twentieth, our biggest, most far-reaching legal decisions have been decided not by careful examination of facts and reference to precedent but by contests of game and sport between the justices...

Oregon Supreme Court Rules on...Circumcision?!?

Posted on January 29, 2008
I know divorce is painful for children, but this is ridiculous.The wishes of a 12-year-old boy should be considered in a dispute between his divorced parents about whether he should be circumcised, the Oregon Supreme Court ruled Friday. The father, James Boldt, converted to Judaism in 2004 and wants the boy to be circumcised as part of the faith...

Court TV

Posted on January 25, 2008
The New York Times published an editorial today calling on the Supreme Court to televise its proceedings. The editors reasoned:Just last week, [the Supreme Court] heard arguments on a challenge to a harsh Indiana voter ID law, a partisan scheme to disenfranchise poor and minority voters...

Would you pass the butter, Justice Breyer?

Posted on January 24, 2008
The quote of the day comes from Justice Breyer's dissent in Ali v. Federal Bureau of Prisons:The word ?any? is of no help because all speakers (including writers and legislators) who use general words such as ?all,? ?any,? ?never,? and ?none? normally rely upon context to indicate the limits of time and place within which they intend those words to do their linguistic work...

Larry Sabato - professional amateur constitutional scholar

Posted on January 23, 2008
The most shameless, self-promoting, media diva in political science has released yet another book. Larry Sabato has released A More Perfect Constitution, which contains 23 suggestions for constitutional amendments to improve our democracy. Most of his ideas can be summed up as "radically stupid...

Breaking News: Having Sex With Patients Not A Job Duty of Therapists

Posted on January 17, 2008
(Once again, thanks to How Appealing)File this one under the heading of "No Sh#%, Sherlock."So a therapist in Kentucky started sleeping with one of his patients. His patient, shocker, got more depressed and sued the doctor for seducing her. The doctor wants to use his liability insurance to settle the claim, but the insurance company argued that sleeping with patients is not within the scope of employment for a therapist...

Judge Posner lays down the law

Posted on January 16, 2008
Via How AppealingIn a recent reinsurance case (which are usually very boring) Judge Posner oberseved:One who voluntarily confers a benefit on another, which is to say in the absence of a contractual obligation to do so, ordinarily has no legal claim to be compensated...

Floor or Ceiling?

Posted on January 15, 2008
The Supreme Court recently heard oral argument in a case that sits at the intersection of federalism and the search and seizure jurisprudence. The question is: what happens if a state law gives criminal suspects more privacy rights than those guaranteed under the 4th Amendment? Here are the facts of the case:In this case, the police in Virginia arrested a man for driving with a suspended license...

Benchmark Writing from the Bench

Posted on January 14, 2008
Lately, I have noticed a kind of ?theme? emerging from some of the research I have conducted into opinion writing. This theme is not really a theme at all, but a set of threads from present time and distant past, observations on opinion writing, and also the efforts of judges themselves in resolving conflicts before their courts...

No Comp for Crack Dealer

Posted on January 14, 2008
Now that I have your attention...Who says state supreme courts never have any fun? Check out this story from Workforce Management magazine:Continually selling crack cocaine amounts to employment and thus is sufficient cause to terminate permanent total disability compensation, Ohio?s Supreme Court has ruled...

It's Official: Hell Has Frozen Over

Posted on January 11, 2008
Snow...in Baghdad.

Gay people must have cooties

Posted on January 11, 2008
Otherwise how can you explain this story? The Toronto Star is reporting that the Canadian health care system bans most gay men from donating organs because of the alleged prevalence of HIV/AIDS within that community.Now doctors are beginning to speak out...

Who Stands in the Way of ?The Great Wall of Bush?? Rootin?-Tootin? Cowboys from Tejas!

Posted on January 10, 2008
The Associated Press is reporting that the Department of Justice is readying 102 lawsuits against property owners in border states who refuse to grant access to Department of Homeland Security officials selecting sites to build border fences. The Bush administration hopes to erect approximately 370 miles of fence and 300 miles of car barriers along the Mexican border before the end of 2008...

All rise! The Honorable Judge Haberdasher Presiding

Posted on January 09, 2008
The Associated Press has a story (via How Appealing) about a judge after my own heart:Circuit Judge William Sosnay held up court for about three hours Tuesday after a prosecutor showed up wearing a red ascot to court despite a rule requiring lawyers to wear neckties...

Please Hold, Your Approximate Wait Time is...25 Years to Life.

Posted on January 09, 2008
Here is the first of hopefully many posts by my good friend, Holmes.On January 7, 2008, in the case Shawano County Sheriff v. Van Patten (07-212), the U.S. Supreme Court issued a per curiam opinion overturning a decision of the 7th Circuit Court of appeal that Joseph Van Patten did not receive effective representation of counsel when he pleaded no contest to first degree reckless homicide and was sentenced to 25 years imprisonment...

Keep It Simple, Stupid!

Posted on January 07, 2008
The Richmond Times-Dispatch (via How Appealing) has a fantastic story about law students using simple language. Heretofore, lawyers have felt the need to contort the English language to make their arguments ipso facto. But every once in a while, a word is just a word...

Justice Scalia and "24"

Posted on January 04, 2008
I read the following over at Salon (via Quiz Law):Last June during a panel discussion in Ottawa about terrorism and the use of torture, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia stood up for the TV torturerextraordinaire and hero of Fox Broadcasting's "24...

An overlooked bicentennial

Posted on January 03, 2008
Last year, there was great fanfare celebrating the 200th anniversary of the United Kingdom's ban on the slave trade. The movie Amazing Grace chronicled the story of William Wilberforce, the parliamentarian who championed the cause of abolition.But January 1, 2008 marked another bicentennial that most people did not notice - a ban on the importation of slaves into the United States...

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