Just saying that saying government passes laws for the general welfare of the people is a highly debatable statement.
Just saying that saying government passes laws for the general welfare of the people is a highly debatable statement.
Since the Obergefell decision is coming soon (next week?), a nice refresher from the best site on the interwebs.
And here's Burwell, for the hell of it.
I'd be shocked if either of them came out next week. It's not impossible, but I'd expect them both to be among the last ones released before the summer recess.
If I had to guess, I'm thinking next week are the first batch of opinions from the April sitting, meaning any unanimous ones or other quick ones. Probably also the Fair Housing Act and Reed (a first amendment case re: sign ordinances) since they're the only ones left from the January sitting, and then a couple other February ones that aren't as high profile or difficult but might still have a dissent or two.
Uno, off the top of your head, has the concern for terrorist activity in large public gatherings become a factor in the courts' analysis of time, place and manner restrictions?
I don't think so, at least off the top of my head. At the least, I don't think SCOTUS has touched on it. There could be lower courts out there that have. The closest I can recall SCOTUS getting to that was on the restrictions on speech around abortion clinics (with violence as one of the reasons for it), and they struck that one down. (MA quickly passed a new one in response).
A North Carolina law that would require women who want an abortion to have an ultrasound scan prior to the procedure suffered a final defeat Monday, when the Supreme Court refused to review the case. A federal judge declared the law illegal in early 2014.
The controversial law had been placed under an injunction soon after it took effect back in 2011. It was struck down on the grounds that it reflected ideological, rather than medical, priorities and violated doctors' right of free speech.
If they declined to hear the case, then there was no vote.I'm pretty sure I saw yesterday that it was still a 5-4 vote by the Supremes. So...........................
I'm pretty sure I saw yesterday that it was still a 5-4 vote by the Supremes. So...........................
Scalia was the only noted dissent to the denial of cert.
SCOTUSBlog finally released an interim stat pack for this term. Most interesting to me is that of the 5-4 opinions so far, only 3 out of 8 so far have broken along purely ideological lines, with the liberals + Kennedy winning two out of those three.
SCOTUSBlog finally released an interim stat pack for this term. Most interesting to me is that of the 5-4 opinions so far, only 3 out of 8 so far have broken along purely ideological lines, with the liberals + Kennedy winning two out of those three.
Here's a fun albeit heavy lifting analysis of the correlation coefficients between justices on the Rehnquist Court. This was back in the day when Thomas used to polish Scalia's knob and never think for himself. Short answer: it's not surprising at all that over the whole caseload there's little significance in correlations between 4- or 5-justice blocs. The correlations actually break down pretty fast, probably because few cases activate the justices' partisanship.