U.S. Courts News Reporter
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So what would you expect if a state supreme court wrote an opinion directly inconsistent with “perhaps the most fundamental rule” of the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence in the area, an opinion that would get a failing grade in any law school course on criminal law? Well, your first guess would be that the Supreme Court would unanimously reverse, and if you were bold you’d predict a short opinion assigned because of its triviality to the most junior justice. That … Read the rest
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In this video, Nate Mowry interviews Robert McNamara of the Institute for Justice, one of the lawyers representing a group of landowners from Houston who sued Texas for flooding their land with a highway project.
The post The takings clause with Robert McNamara appeared first on SCOTUSblog.
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Civil rights plaintiffs scored a significant victory in Health & Hospital Corp. of Marion County v. Talevski on Thursday, with a seven-justice majority reaffirming that private plaintiffs can enforce spending clause enactments through 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and allowing private damages actions to enforce the Federal Nursing Home Reform Act of 1987.
FNHRA, a law enacted under Congress’s spending clause powers, requires nursing facilities participating in Medicare and Medicaid to “protect and promote the rights of each resident” as … Read the rest
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In 2016, a Minnesota county sold 94-year-old Geraldine Tyler’s condo at auction after she failed to pay her property taxes for several years. The sale yielded $ 40,000; Hennepin County kept not only the $ 15,000 in taxes, penalties, and costs that Tyler owed it, but also the $ 25,000 that was left over. The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the county’s actions violated the Fifth Amendment’s takings clause, which bars the government from taking private property for … Read the rest
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The Relist Watch column examines cert petitions that the Supreme Court has “relisted” for its upcoming conference. A short explanation of relists is available here.
This Friday’s conference represents a significant date in the Supreme Court’s schedule: Based on the schedule prescribed by the court’s rules, it is the last conference at which a cert petition can be granted and the case heard during the court’s April sitting. Because it appears that sitting is mostly empty at … Read the rest
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The last few decades have witnessed the working out in several cases of a sustained disagreement between the Supreme Court and California legislators and judges. The Supreme Court has taken the view that the Federal Arbitration Act compels the enforcement, in state and federal courts, of pre-dispute arbitration agreements. Accordingly, the justices have rejected every effort to undermine the capacious application of those agreements to shift disputes between businesses and employees or customers from courts to arbitrators. California, acting … Read the rest
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Thursday’s decision in Hemphill v. New York affirmed the requirement for cross-examination of testimonial statements offered at trial and rejected a state law exception to the rule. A jury convicted Darrell Hemphill of second-degree murder after a trial court admitted un-cross-examined testimonial statements from a third-party’s plea allocution. New York courts agreed the admission did not violate Crawford v. Washington, which interpreted the Sixth Amendment’s confrontation clause to require cross-examination of testimonial statements offered at trial. But in … Read the rest