Supreme Court

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  4/25/2021
  

  Split-Second Decisions: How a Supreme Court Case Shaped Modern Policing

  The SCOTUS decision in Graham v. Connor granted broad deference to police officers' judgment about the necessity of use of force; activists now recognize the decision as an impediment to prosecuting officers for abusive actions. 

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• SOURCE: The New Republic
  4/15/2021
  

  The Democrats’ Court-Packing Plan Doesn’t Make Any Sense

  Writer Matt Ford argues that the proposed Judiciary Act will fail to address the political problems that the Democrats are reacting to. Is there a better approach? 

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• SOURCE: Democracy Docket
  3/23/2021
  

  It’s Time to Reframe Voting Rights in the Courts

  Since the expansion of voting rights by legislation and the courts in the 1960s, conservative legal activists have narrowed ballot access by shifting legal focus from the interests of the voters toward the purported interest of the state in protecting election integrity, balancing a real problem against a largely imaginary one. 

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  3/25/2021
  

  The Obscure Case That Could Blow Up American Civil-Rights and Consumer-Protection Laws

  Law professor Eduardo Peñalver argues that the case of Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid which challenges a 1975 California law allowing labor organizers limited access to private agricultural land to speak to workers, could apply a radical version of the "takings" doctrine to block many kinds of labor, consumer, and civil rights law. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  3/22/2021
  

  Does Requiring Only Men to Register for the Draft Violate the Constitution?

  by Adam Liptak

  A Supreme Court challenge to the male-only requirement to register for the draft is an odd coalition of the ACLU and the anti-feminist National Coalition for Men. If successful, it could end one of the last legal sex-based distinctions in federal law. 

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• SOURCE: Slate
  3/19/2021
  

  Neil Gorsuch Supports an Originalist Theory That Would Destroy Modern Governance

  Julian Davis Mortenson and Nicholas Bagley put forth a sweeping argument: an ascendant legal theory championed by conservative originalists has no actual basis in history.

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  2/2/2021
  

  We Need a Second Season of ‘Mrs. America.’ Here’s Why

  by Magdalene Zier

  After the defeat of the ERA, Phyllis Schlafly's activist career entered a second act, pushing the federal judiciary in conservative directions.

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• SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
  3/1/2021
  

  Originalism’s Original Sin

  by Adam Shapiro

  Liberal critics should understand the ways that Constitutional originalism's practices of reading and resolving conflicts in the text owes a great deal to biblical literalism. Historians of religion can help understand what's at stake. 

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• SOURCE: Mother Jones
  3/1/2021
  

  Republicans Are Trying to Kill What’s Left of the Voting Rights Act

  by Ari Berman

  Voting Rights expert Ari Berman says that Chief Justice John Roberts's career gives troubling indications of how the court will rule on cases that could render the Voting Rights act impotent. 

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• SOURCE: Vox
  2/23/2021
  

  The Supreme Court is About to Hear Two Cases that Could Destroy what Remains of the Voting Rights Act

  Chief Justice John Roberts has a long record of hostility to the Voting Rights Act, and authored the decision that weakened it. The Supreme Court is preparing to hear cases that may allow him to destroy the VRA. 

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• SOURCE: Freedom Forum
  2/3/2021
  

  A First Amendment Case that May be the Key to Trump's Impeachment Trial

  by Tony Mauro

  A First Amendment researcher offers a brief primer on Brandenburg v. Ohio, a case which Trump's legal supporters argue shields his January 6 rhetoric from criminal sanction because it was not purposefully aimed at inciting "imminent lawless action" – a claim critics say is blatantly contradicted by the subsequent actions of a mob a mile away from where Trump spoke.

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• SOURCE: Wall Street Journal
  3/3/2021
  

  Supreme Court Denies Holocaust Victims’ Property Claims Against Nazi Germany, Hungary

  The Supreme Court ruled that despite the evidence of the theft of property from victims of the Holocaust, their descendants could not seek relief against the German government by invoking international law in a U.S. Court. 

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• SOURCE: New York Magazine
  2/3/2021
  

  Reintroducing Sonia Sotomayor

  by Irin Carmon

  After nearly 12 years since her appointment to the Supreme Court, writer Irin Carmon reviews Sonia Sotomayor's role on a changing court and the media outrage over her suggestion that purely color-blind justice is an illusion. 

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• SOURCE: New York Daily News
  1/30/2021
  

  Change the Court, for Good: For Starters, the Oldest Justice Should Retire While There’s a Democratic President and Senate

  by Samuel Moyn

  "For four years liberals have argued that inherited norms are precious, in the face of a president who delighted in flouting them.... But the Supreme Court is in a situation where some of its norms are noxious, like justices overstaying their welcome."

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• 1/31/2021
  

  Palin v. New York Times is a Textualist Land Mine for the First Amendment

  by Richard E. Labunski

  In June, trial will begin in Sarah Palin's libel case against the New York Times. The case appears to be teed up on a path to the Supreme Court, where the current "actual malice" standard for proving a public figure was libeled could be overturned. If this happens, the door will be open to lawsuits aimed at crushing press criticism of the government.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  12/15/2020
  

  James Flug, Who Helped Block Nixon Nominees and Investigated Watergate, Dies at 81

  James Flug, an aide to Senator Ted Kennedy, played a significant role in Senate investigations and in the successful political opposition to Richard Nixon's Supreme Court nominations of Clement Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell. 

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  12/11/2020
  

  Lifetime Tenure Meant Even Trump’s Supreme Court Picks Could Resist His Pressure

  by Teri Kanefield

  Alexander Hamilton's arguments for a independent judiciary in the Federalist Papers were borne out by the Supreme Court's dismissal of the pro-Trump suit brought by Texas's attorney general. 

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• SOURCE: Algemeiner
  12/6/2020
  

  US Supreme Court to Hear Two Cases Related to Holocaust Restitution

  Two cases test the doctrine of foreign sovereign immunity to determine whether U.S. courts have jurisdiction to return works of art to heirs of Jewish art dealers dispossessed by Nazis in 1935.

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• SOURCE: Capital Radio
  11/30/2020
  

  Can Trump Change A Key Census Count? Supreme Court Hears His Claim

  Margo Anderson says that the Trump administration's plan to exclude undocumented immigrants from the census is unprecedented in the history of the count. 

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• SOURCE: NPR
  11/10/2020
  

  Will Supreme Court Invalidate Obamacare A Decade After It Was Enacted?

  NPR court analyst Nina Totenberg discusses the case being argued today in front of the new 6-3 conservative majority which could jeopardize millions of people's health insurance during the COVID pandemic.