Can Florida Invent its Own Definition of “Mentally Retarded” in the Capital Punishment Context?
Serving a death sentence upon a person with severe intellectual disabilities is a violation of the Eighth Amendment. Several Supreme […]
Courts & Judicial Interpretation
Amicus, Courts & Judicial Interpretation, Criminal Justice, Freedom of Expression, LGBTQ Rights, Voting and Elections Rights, Weekly News Roundup
March 10: Weekly News Roundup
The last week has had several civil rights updates on several different fronts: “Senate Democrats help block Obama nominee for
March 3: Weekly News Roundup
The end of February delivered a flurry of civil rights and civil liberties news. Here are a few stories to
Amicus, Courts & Judicial Interpretation, Freedom of Expression, LGBTQ Rights
Which Slippery Slope?
Justice Scalia is (in)famous for his view that when the Court struck down Texas’ criminal sodomy statute in Lawrence v.
Amicus, Courts & Judicial Interpretation, Events
“Arguments Are Cheap,” Says Justice Breyer
“Arguments are cheap. Briefs are filled with thousands. What matters is what grabs you.” Justice Breyer stopped by Wasserstein on
Amicus, Courts & Judicial Interpretation, Freedom of Expression, Reproductive Rights, Voting and Elections Rights
Linda Greenhouse on The Roberts Project
Linda Greenhouse – October 10, 2013 Ms. Greenhouse began by noting that it is an under appreciated aspect of the
Amicus, Courts & Judicial Interpretation, Events, Sex Equality
Supreme Court Term in Review 2013
On Thursday, September 26th, Harvard Law School held a review of the previous term of the Supreme Court. The panelists
Inadequate Redress and the No-Fly List
Last July, the Ninth Circuit in Latif v. Holder held that the district courts have original jurisdiction over claims that
Fisher: Revisiting CRCL’s Responses to Hopwood v. Texas
With this year’s big affirmative action case, Fisher v. University of Texas, being one of the highlights of the Supreme Court’s current term, it is worth circling back to CRCL’s previous treatment of the issue and reflecting on the moment in the 1990s when Hopwood killed UT’s earlier attempt to use affirmative action to remedy a history of segregation. What can these articles tell us about the issues at stake in Fisher? There seem to be two general lessons.
Statutory Rights, Related Regulations, and the Bounds of “Interpretation”
In the wake of Gonzaga Univ. v. Doe, in which the Supreme Court entrenched a tight-fisted test for whether Congress has guaranteed a statutory right to individuals, the lower courts have felt out the bounds of a new doctrine piecemeal. Recently, in Shakhnes v. Berlin, the Second Circuit held that at least in some cases where Congress confers a right with bounds set by flexible standards – as opposed to hard and fast rules – and a regulation subsequently “defines or fleshes out that right” by imposing a rigid rule, the statute provides the “source” of a right but the regulation ultimately defines the limits of what is enforceable under § 1983. The court ignored persuasive reasoning that would have provided a conceptually sounder basis for deciding the narrow issue at bar, but in so doing mitigated the unduly harsh consequences of the narrower conception of rights that would follow from such reasoning in the wake of Gonzaga.
Supreme Court Needs To Answer Questions Dodged In U.S. v. Jones
Reviving the trespassory model of the Fourth Amendment, the Court in U.S. v. Jones has raised more questions about data privacy than it answered. If the mere existence and transmission of data can signal a lack of a reasonable expectation of privacy, the only way to demonstrate a subjective interest in privacy will be to go off the grid. There has to be a better way.