Supreme Court

Human rights experts say there is a serious risk that some of the Guantanamo detainees cleared for release could face persecution or torture.

Maybe now we’ll finally get to find out where the high court’s newest justice, Sonia Sotomayor, really stands when it comes to whether the Second Amendment guarantees individual citizens a “right to bear arms.”
That was a contentious issue at her confirmation hearings, with Republican gun enthusiasts warning that she doesn’t support gun ownership as a [...]

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 [...]

The American Civil Liberties Union today asked a Washington, D.C., federal court to require the federal government to release the transcripts of 14 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay in which they describe abuse and torture suffered in CIA custody.
The transcripts come from the Combatant Status Review Tribunals, which the military set up to determine whether suspects [...]

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 [...]