“A federal law that prohibits people subject to domestic violence restraining orders from possessing firearms is unconstitutional,” a three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Thursday, February 2, 2023 (read story here). The Fifth Circuit, which is based in the De[...]
Posts Tagged ‘Supreme Court’
January 19th, 2023 - 12:50 pm § in Law and Courts
Supreme Court can’t ID leaker
The Supreme Court marshal and her investigators couldn’t find out who leaked Alito’s draft abortion decision. Her report (here) says they don’t believe the IT system was hacked from outside; and besides the justices, 80 court employees had access to an electronic copy and 2 more ha[...]
Trump’s Supreme Court is a hanging court
The Supreme Court is no longer a place you can go to stop the execution of an innocent person, or of someone whose sentencing was influenced by racial bias. Since 2019, when Trump put his first two appointees on the court, the new conservative court majority hasn’t accepted a single death pena[...]
December 7th, 2022 - 12:43 am § in Law and Courts
Lawyers go rogue; will the Supreme Court follow?
Moore v. Harper is a case before the Supreme Court that legal experts agree could upend American democracy. In this case, conservative lawyers are asking the court to give state legislatures absolute power over state and federal elections. (See story here.) This is a prescription for minority rule. [...]
December 5th, 2022 - 4:47 pm § in Law and Courts, Racism
Justices Alito puts KKK robes on black kids and laughs
A bizarre scene unfolded in the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday, December 5, 2022. Lawyers were arguing over whether a Colorado graphic designer has a religious right to refuse service to gay couples (spoiler alert: she’ll win). Justice Jackson, who’s black, asked the designer’s attor[...]
November 9th, 2022 - 9:50 pm § in Law and Courts, Republicans
Supreme Court case threatens Medicaid patients’ rights
The Supreme Court allows Texas to empower complete strangers — legal vigilantes — to sue anyone, even a taxi driver, who helps a woman get an abortion. Now conservative justices obsessively hung up on states’ rights, and eager to overturn precedents, are considering a case pushed b[...]
November 6th, 2022 - 5:58 pm § in Law and Courts
Native American adoption preference isn’t racism
If the U.S. accuses China of forced assimilation of the Uyghur people, they can say “you did it too,” and they’d be right. Early 20th century attempts to force Native Americans to become “white” are a dark chapter in American history. “Assimilation” was a di[...]
October 23rd, 2022 - 7:09 pm § in Law and Courts, Racism
Why a genuinely “originalist” Supreme Court would uphold affirmative action
The Supreme Court’s conservatives claim to be “originalists,” a doctrine which holds that the Constitution means what its authors intended. This term, the court will revisit affirmative action, and lawyers opposed to the practice will argue the 14th Amendment requires college admis[...]
October 10th, 2022 - 10:20 am § in Law and Courts
Pig pen fight
I’ll bet you want to spend your Monday reading about the “dormant Commerce Clause.” Your wish is my command. Let’s start with history. Before the Constitution, “economic Balkanization … plagued relations among the Colonies and later among the States under the Arti[...]