scotus

Although court-watchers were predicting that the Supreme Court would decide yesterday whether to hear the appeal from a group of Chinese Muslim detainees at Guantanamo Bay claiming the right to be released into the United States, the high court apparently decided not to decide, at least for now. Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSblog writes that the [...]

Among the cases the Supreme Court will consider reviewing in its private meeting tomorrow are two controversial cases arising out of the war on terror. Both question whether the president’s authority over detainees and information about their treatment is absolute, or reviewable by the federal courts.
The first and better-known case involves whether the executive branch [...]

The U.S. Supreme Court this morning had good news: “Justice Ginsburg was released from Washington Hospital Center this morning and plans to be at work at the Court this afternoon.”
Ginsburg was hospitalized yesterday after “feeling ill in her chambers earlier in the day,” the Court announced.  An hour after receiving an injection in response to [...]

Ed Brayton at ScienceBlogs (and also of our sister site, The Michigan Messenger) has a thorough analysis of the Obama administration’s new state secrets policy, which I wrote about yesterday.
Ed sums it up: “All of the changes are to the process by which the administration will determine when to invoke the SSP [State Secrets [...]

Here’s Scotusblog’s Lyle Denniston’s take on this morning’s argument in the campaign finance case Citizens United v. FEC:
If supporters of federal curbs on political campaign spending by corporations were hoping that Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., and Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., would be hesitant to strike down such restrictions, they could take no [...]

In yet another case that questions the power of federal courts to rein in the government’s executive branch, the U.S. Circuit Court in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday issued a mandate that allows the government to send up to 150 Guantanamo detainees to other countries over the prisoners’ objections, Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSblog reports. The ruling [...]

Brenda Wright, Director of Democracy Program at Demos, has posted some insights at the American Constitution Society’s blog on the big campaign finance case, Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission, to be argued before the Supreme Court tomorrow. Here’s her take:
Overruling those cases would mean that corporate political spending no longer needs to be funded [...]

Excerpts released by C-SPAN in advance of its upcoming series on the Supreme Court, scheduled to begin airing October 4, suggest that some of the more conservative justices on the court are more wary of the impact their new colleague, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, may have on the court’s dynamic.
“To some extent, it’s unsettling,” says Chief [...]

The upcoming re-argument of the case of Citizens United v. FEC, challenging corporate contributions to the financing of Hillary: The Movie, is raising some serious questions about whether the Supreme Court might vote to overturn decades-old restrictions on corporate campaign spending.
The vote of the Court’s newest justice on that issue, however, may be more predictable.
Although [...]

There’s speculation that 89-year-old Justice John Paul Stevens, the liberal stalwart on the court, may soon announce his retirement.  Justice Stevens has reportedly hired only one law clerk for the term starting in October 2010. Usually, justices hire four.
Of course, Stevens still has time to hire, and there would be no shortage of brilliant recent [...]