My most enduring memory of Justice Kennedy is no doubt watching him lean over the bench, red faced and angry, screaming/yelling/lecturing at Neal Katyal during the Dollar General oral argument. I concluded then, if I hadn’t already before that moment from his writings, that Justice Kennedy was so disturbed by tribal jurisdiction over non-Indians and non-Indian …
Here is “John Roberts, Silent During The Garland Process, Suddenly Worries About Partisanship.” An excerpt: When Mitch McConnell decided that black presidents only get to be president for seven years and refused to hold a hearing on Barack Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court, there was only one man in the country who could have …
“First thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” This line from Shakespeare’s Henry VI reflects a popular sentiment toward lawyers who make the simple complex for their own interest. Only lawyers would take such a technically highfalutin’ issue such as this to the highest court in the land: Whether 20 U.S.C. 1415(l) requires petitioners …
As observers might have predicted from the oral argument in United States v. Bryant (opinion here), the government’s victory was not surprising. Of course, even a few years ago, this outcome was far from a foregone conclusion, as the 2005 Canby-Washburn-Sands debates in the Federal Sentencing Reporter suggested. A few takeaways: 1. Remarkable that the Court heaps …
President Obama is expected to announce D.C. Circuit Judge Merrick B. Garland to the Supreme Court. Judge Garland has a very limited record on Indian law issues. He was on the panel that decided Ramapough Mountain Indians v. Norton, an unsigned per curiam decision from 2001, that affirmed the Interior Department’s decision not to acknowledge the Ramapough …
Update to Justice Scalia post…. We now have a link to the Charlie Rose show where Justice Scalia made a statement about his vote in the Holyfield matter — it starts at about 34:20 into the show, or at about 19:20 remaining. NYTs coverage here. Yes, he absolutely got the facts wrong…. Also, and I regret forgetting …
Justice Scalia’s death allows us to reflect on his Indian law record. If you were an Indian person or an Indian tribe as a party in a Supreme Court matter, it was very unlikely you would have his vote, although he did on occasion surprise. Overall, during Justice Scalia’s tenure on the Supreme Court (his …
“It may be difficult for a tribe with a few thousand members to run a justice system on par with a state or the federal government.” Brief of Dollar General Corporation to the Supreme Court (p. 9) Dollar General Corporation filed its opening brief with the U.S. Supreme Court last week in the case of …
Benjamin I. Sachs, a law professor at Harvard University, notes that while federal law lets union members prevent the use of their dues for political purposes, shareholders do not have similar rights. “If we’re going to say that collectives have speech rights, then we should treat unions and corporations the same,” Sachs told me. Employees …
American workers and their unions were dealt major losses by the U.S. Supreme Court today. The court ruled against workers in two cases, both of which have special relevance for women workers. 1. Hobby Lobby ruling: Certain corporations can have religious beliefs and use them to deny workers health care coverage The court ruled that …