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The Petitions of the Week column highlights a selection of cert petitions recently filed in the Supreme Court. A list of all petitions we’re watching is available here.
The Constitution constrains states from excessively burdening out-of-state commerce – a doctrine known as the dormant commerce clause, because it is implicit in the grant of power to Congress to regulate interstate commerce. Five years ago, a divided Supreme Court held in South Dakota v. Wayfair that, under the doctrine, … Read the rest
On June 27, 2022, Three Arrows Capital (“3AC”), a crypto hedge fund, commenced liquidation proceedings in the British Virgin Islands and thereafter filed recognition proceedings in, among other countries, the United States and Singapore. As we discussed earlier this year, on December 2, 2022, the bankruptcy court presiding over 3AC’s chapter 15 proceeding pending in the Southern District of New York held that the 3AC joint liquidators (the “JLs”) could serve a subpoena (the “U.S. Subpoena”) upon a 3AC cofounder, … Read the rest
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The Petitions of the Week column highlights a selection of cert petitions recently filed in the Supreme Court. A list of all petitions we’re watching is available here.
Conversion therapy, the practice of seeking to change a gay or transgender person’s sexual orientation or gender identity through counseling, is outlawed or heavily restricted in roughly half of the country. This week, we highlight cert petitions that ask the court to consider, among other things, whether a Washington state … Read the rest
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Both oral advocates faced fairly cold receptions on Monday morning in United States v. Hansen when the Supreme Court heard argument on whether 8 U.S.C. § 1324(a)(1)(iv), the federal law that criminalizes “encouraging or inducing” an immigrant to come or remain in the United States unlawfully, violates the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech.
The argument also shed more light on the newer justices’ views on the freedom of speech. The newly reconfigured Court appears less strongly … Read the rest
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The Supreme Court doesn’t care all that much for method-of-execution challenges. It particularly disfavors Eighth Amendment litigation attacking familiar lethal injection protocols as “cruel and unusual” punishment. In the past 20 years, the court has announced substantive constitutional law, pleading requirements, and timeliness rules that make it harder to win such arguments. Nance v. Ward (to be argued on Monday) is about the procedural vehicle that prisoners must use to challenge execution methods. The case is important because Georgia’s … Read the rest
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On Wednesday afternoon, in the shadow of reports of Justice Stephen Breyer’s forthcoming retirement announcement, the Supreme Court denied an application to postpone the executions of two Oklahoma men. The brief order, with no recorded dissents, cleared the way for Oklahoma to execute one of the men, Donald Grant, at 11 a.m. EST on Thursday morning. The other, Gilbert Postelle, is scheduled to be executed on Feb. 17.
Oklahoma’s lethal-injection protocol has received increased scrutiny in recent years. Grant … Read the rest