Courts & Judicial Interpretation

Amicus, Courts & Judicial Interpretation, Voting and Elections Rights

Wrapping Up Court's Campaign Finance Ruling

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This morning the Supreme Court decided two campaign finance cases consolidated under Arizona Free Enterprise Club’s Freedom Club PAC v. Bennett. Writing for a narrow but familiar 5-4 majority—which included Justices Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, and Alito—Chief Justice John Roberts overruled the Ninth Circuit and struck down Arizona’s Citizens Clean Elections Act.

Amicus, Courts & Judicial Interpretation, Freedom of Expression

[Breaking News] Today's SCOTUS Decisions on Free Speech

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The Supreme Court today struck down two state laws concerning free speech. In Arizona Free Enterprise Club PAC v. Bennett, Chief Justice Roberts, representing the usual 5-4 split, delivered an opinion striking down Arizona’s Clean Elections Act granting matching funds to publicly financed candidates triggered by spending by privately financed candidates and outside groups. In EMA v. Brown, Scalia delivers the opinion of a seven Justice majority striking down California’s ban on the sale of violent video games to children. More analysis to come.

Amicus, Courts & Judicial Interpretation, LGBTQ Rights

Can Being A Minority Be A Conflict Of Interest?

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After the revelation by Proposition 8 judge Vaughn Walker that he is gay and in a long-term same-sex relationship, Prop. 8 supporters are trying to have his landmark ruling striking down the California referendum vacated on the grounds that he should have recused himself. This is an attempt to strain the general practice of conflict of interest recusal from family and financial conflict of interest to some other type of personal conflict of interest.

Amicus, Courts & Judicial Interpretation

Harvard Professor Calls On Justices To Retire

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Harvard Professor Randall Kennedy suggests that Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer should consider retirement in the interest of the long-term survival of the more progressive wing of the court. Kennedy calls retirement “the responsible thing to do.” Looking ahead to the 2012 election and the prospect, however slim, of the beginning of a new eight-year Republican administration, Professor Kennedy fears that the two moderate progressives wouldn’t be able to wait eight years to retire, and “they will have contributed to a disaster.”

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