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AP: “A sharply divided Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld President Donald Trump’s ban on travel from several mostly Muslim countries. The majority opinion rejected the notion that the ban discriminates against Muslims or exceeds presidential authority. In writing the majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote: “We express no view on the soundness of the …
Berman, Emily, Digital Searches, the Fourth Amendment, and the Magistrates’ Revolt (May 30, 2018). Emory Law Journal, Forthcoming. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3187612 “Searches of electronically stored information present a Fourth Amendment challenge. It is often impossible for investigators to identify and collect, at the time a warrant is executed, only the specific data whose seizure …
EFF: “The Supreme Court handed down a landmark opinion today in Carpenter v. United States, ruling 5-4 that the Fourth Amendment protects cell phone location information. In an opinion by Chief Justice Roberts, the Court recognized that location information, collected by cell providers like Sprint, AT&T, and Verizon, creates a “detailed chronicle of a person’s …
Kritzer, Herbert M., Polarized Justice? Changing Patterns of Decision-Making in the Federal Courts (May 5, 2018). University of Minnesota Law School, Working Papers, May 5, 2018. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3187627 “This article examines the question of whether there has been a pattern of increasing partisan polarization in decisions by federal judges. After an initial section …
Quartz: “Imagine you’re driving in a foreign country and a police officer stops you on the road. You don’t speak the cop’s language and they don’t speak yours, so a halting exchange ensues using a laptop and Google Translate. You’re not always sure what the officer is asking, and you end up agreeing to something …
Feldman, Stephen Matthew, Nothing New Under the Sun: The Law-Politics Dynamic in Supreme Court Decision Making (May 18, 2018). Pepperdine Law Review, Vol. 44, No. p 43, 2017. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3180736 “Recent events have seemed to inject politics into American judicial institutions. As a result, many observers worry that the Supreme Court, in particular, …
Recode: “Verizon? Go right ahead. Charter? You too. Amazon and other tech companies with billions to burn? Go for it. That’s the message from a federal judge, who has ruled today that AT&T can buy Time Warner — and, crucially, didn’t apply any restrictions to his decision. That clears the way for other “vertical” mergers, …
Vox: “The US Supreme Court on Monday upheld Ohio’s system for purging voters from the rolls. The Court split 5-4 along partisan lines, with the five conservative-leaning justices, in a majority opinion by Justice Samuel Alito, upholding the system and the four liberal-leaning justices opposing it. The ruling focused in large part on technical interpretations …
BuzzFeed: “The Justice Department argued Monday that President Donald Trump could continue to profit from foreign governments patronizing his hotel in Washington, DC, without violating the US Constitution, as long as he didn’t explicitly provide something in return. The fact that foreign officials were quoted in media reports saying they would spend money at the …
Lawrence Lessig – Wired [Lawrence Lessig (@lessig) is the Roy L. Furman professor of law and leadership at Harvard University and founder of Equal Citizens. He was lead counsel in Eldred v. Ashcroft (2002)]: “Almost exactly 20 years ago, Congress passed the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, which extended the term of existing copyrights …
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse: “The Immigration Court’s backlog keeps rising. As of the end of May 2018, the number of cases waiting decision reached an all-time high of 714,067. This compares with a court backlog of 542,411 cases at the end of January 2017 when President Trump assumed office. During his term the backlog has …
Washington Post: Voters remove judge who sentenced Brock Turner to six months in Stanford sexual assault case – “The California judge who evoked national outrage after sentencing Stanford University swimmer Brock Turner to six months in jail after his conviction for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman was ousted from office Tuesday night following a tempestuous …
