SCOTUS Ends Term With Historic Decisions

Chief Justice John Roberts

On the penultimate business day in June, the United States Supreme Court concluded its term with the announcement of its historic decision in National Federation of Independent Business v Sebelius; the Obamacare case that tested the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act.  As unlikely a jurist as could be found, a visibly uncomfortable Chief Justice John Roberts, announced that Obamacare was upheld in a 5-4 opinion that he authored.

The ACA was upheld on the somewhat questionable grounds of Congress' power to levy a tax.  More than a few legal scholars characterize the so-called "individual mandate" requiring individuals to secure health insurance or pay a penalty, as Congress levying a punishment, not a tax.  The consensus among these same scholars, however, is that challenging the constitutionality of the ACA was a colossal waste of time; legislation of this nature has routinely passed constitutional muster dating back to the social programs of the 1930s.

We here at the Law Blogger cannot wait for the contribution from our guest blogger, Professor Robert Sedler, to weigh in on this decision.  Stay tuned for that.

Here is a summary of some of the more significant decisions issued by SCOTUS this term:

• Churches are entitled to a "ministerial exception" to their adherence to state and federal employment laws, enabling them to hire whomever they want to stand at the pulpit; the remaining question in this case is how deep into the employee roster this ministerial exception goes.

• Police must secure a warrant, as required under the 4th Amendment's "search and seizure" clause, prior to attaching a GPS tracking device on a vehicle.

• Corporations and unions can spend unlimited amounts of money on political campaigns as the Court upheld it's game-changing Citizens United decision and applied it to a Montana law.

• An accused has a right to the effective assistance of legal counsel under the Sixth Amendment during the criminal plea-bargaining process.

• The prosecutor's expert witness may discuss laboratory test results [usually involving blood samples and DNA] without the live testimony of lab analysis that assisted in processing the sample, and this does not violate the "confrontation clause" of the Fifth Amendment.

• State criminal laws that require that a juvenile convicted of murder be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole are unconstitutional.

The justices will reconvene for the 2012-2013 term in October.  Must be nice to be one of nine justices on the High Court.  After deciding such weighty decisions that affect our lives, you really get to enjoy your summer!

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Posted in: Chief Justice John Roberts,Fifth Amendment.,Fourth Amendment,Law Professor Robert Sedler,SCOTUS,Sixth Amendment

SCOTUS Imposes Warrant Requirement for GPS Vehicle Tracking

Last Monday, the SCOTUS issued a 5-4 decision in what could turn into a seminal 4th Amendment case; United States vs Jones.  The High Court strongly embraced privacy here in the electronic age.

In 2004, Antoine Jones owned and operated a hopping night club in downtown Washington D.C.  His joint was so jumpin, it caught the attention of a joint drug task force consisting of the FBI and the Washington PD.

The task force staked out the club by filming all the action at the front door.  Also, Jones' cell phones were tapped and data dumped.  With this evidence in hand, the task force applied for and was granted a warrant to place a GPS tracking device on Jones' wife's Jeep Cherokee within 10-days and within the District of Colombia.

Problem: the GPS device was placed on Jones' vehicle on the 11th day, and in Maryland.  The vehicle was tracked for 28-days and a case for cocaine distribution was submitted for prosecution based, in part, on the evidence collected through the GPS tracker.

Prior to his first trial, Jones moved to suppress the GPS data; his motion was only granted in part.  The trial resulted in a hung jury.  Jones was tried again, and ultimately he was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.

The federal appellate court, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, reversed Jones' conviction and SCOTUS granted the U.S. Solicitor's petition for certerorari.  On appeal, the government conceded to the botched execution of the warrant, arguing no warrant was needed in the first place.

Last November, when the case was orally argued before the United States Supreme Court, the Justices were clearly troubled by the government's argument.  An appellate lawyer can glean a lot about the likely outcome of a case from the questions justices and judges pose, or don't pose, during oral argument.

In Jones, Justice Steven Breyer likened the government's position to George Orwell's 1984, commenting to the Solicitor General, "If you win this case, there is nothing to prevent police or government from monitoring 24-hours a day, every citizen of the United States."

Chief Justice John Roberts wanted to know whether the Solicitor General's argument meant that the government could place tracking devices on the vehicles of the 9 Justices.

The opinions themselves, contain Justices' musings [dicta] on what the founders would have ruled back in 1791, regarding these confounded GPS devices.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a concurrence taking a broad view of our privacy protections guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment, against the many highly sophisticated new electronic tracking devices deployed by the government.  Justice Anthony Scalia, writing for the majority, tailored a more narrow view of privacy; couching his conclusion on the basic definition of a "search", and clearly demarcating our "expectation of privacy" to include satellite tracking device-free vehicles.  

Flatly rejecting the government's argument that the temporary installation of the GPS tracking device was not a search, the Scalia majority affirmed the DC Circuit's reversal of Jones' conviction, warning authorities they needed a probable cause warrant in order to attach tracking devices.

Other than Sotomayor's concurrence, which does not bind future courts, SCOTUS  did not provide a sweeping enhancement of privacy rights in the electronic age.

Dodging a serious sentencing bullet, life, Mr. Jones is now free to go; his conviction for distributing cocaine stays reversed.

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Posted in: Chief Justice John Roberts,Fourth Amendment,Justice Sonia Sotomayor,SCOTUS,search and seizure,United States v Jones

SCOTUS Orders the Release of More than 45k California Felons

Photo Credit: LA Times

In a hotly contested 5-4 plurality decision that will surely go down as one of the more controversial cases of this decade, SCOTUS affirmed the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in ordering the release of more than 45,000 California felons.  The decision will precipitate the largest release of prisoners in American history.

Brown v Plata began it's marathon crawl through the federal court system in 1990, when a case was filed challenging the poor status of mental health treatment in the California prisons.  Then in 2001, a companion case challenging the medical care of prisoners was initiated.

These consolidated cases have everything, from a procedural standpoint.  For example, a "special master" first was appointed by the federal court to make findings about the prison conditions.  The State of California stipulated to violations of the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment and agreed to remedy the problem by reducing overcrowding in the prisons.  Next, when remedial measures fell short, or did not occur, the court appointed a receiver to oversee the California Department of Corrections.

The cases were even assigned to a special three-judge panel to oversee the CDC's progress; or lack thereof.

Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the majority's opinion, finding that prison conditions had gone too far for too long.  The opinion provides a few slices of life in the CDC like sharing a toilet with 55 of your good buddies, or doing your entire four-year bit in a sweaty gymnasium. 

The always-conservative Justice Antonin Scalia opined that the majority's decision was "absurd", noting that SCOTUS routinely overruled 9th Circuit decisions that called for the release of individual prisoners.  Justice Scalia sees grave problems that will come home to roost from the Plata ruling.

In a separate dissent, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that the majority's decision conflicts with a federal law which prohibits judges from releasing prisoners.

The one thing SCOTUS gave the State of California was time.  California has busied itself with transferring thousands of state prisoners to county jails across the state.  This will not amelioriate the entire problem, however, and some of California's "happy-go-lucky" [Scalia's characterization] felons will wind up on the streets.

This High Court decision brings into focus the inherent tension between our individual freedoms and enforcement of the laws.  There is a constant tension between the two concepts.  Sometimes, that tension cycles to the breaking point like in California, where too many law breakers are stuffed into concrete boxes that are ready to explode.

In Michigan, although we are far behind California in maxing-out our prison capacity, we have an awful lot of population encased in concrete and barbed wire.  In fact, we have the opposite problem.  Due to budget cuts, we have at least one brand new facility, in Lake County, sitting empty due to lack of funding.

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Posted in: California,California Department of Corrections,Chief Justice John Roberts,constitution,cruel and unusual punishment,eighth amendment,Justice Antonin Scalia,prison,prisoners,SCOTUS

SCOTUS Grills California's Hired Appellate Counsel in Landmark Prison Case

Justice Sonia Sotomayor

Ok, we've seen this one coming down the tracks.  The ABA Journal is reporting that Justice Sonia Sotomayor told the managing partner of Sydney Austin's Washington, D.C. office, Carter Phillips, to "slow down from the rhetoric", as Phillips began his argument before the High Court on behalf of the State of California in the Schwarznegger -v- Plata  prison overcrowding case.

Justice Sotomayor also had a series of hard questions for California's appellate attorney such as how his client could possibly explain recent prison deaths and why these prisons are choking with dazed, deranged inmates sitting in their own feces.  She wanted to know what California's plan will be.

 As you can imagine, the present Justice-mix soon erupted and the debate was carried on, heatedly, among the jurists themselves.  The high-powered lawyers were rendered oddly silent, as the intra-jurist discussion was occasionally refereed by Chief Justice John Roberts.

According to eye-witness accounts from among the professional-stocked galleries, Justice Samuel Alito was visibly agitated pondering the prospect of newly released inmates cruising the streets of California and, eventually, the nation.

Court watchers once again believe that the Court will line-up along their classic "ideological" lines, neutralizing each other, 4 votes to 4; and setting up Justice Anthony Kennedy to write the tie-breaking concurring opinion.

Even if the Court's opinion amounts to a mere plurality (less binding on subsequent couts), a landmark prisoner's rights opinion is heralded.  We will, of course, update you on the SCOTUS opinion.  You'll know when this decision hits (March/April?) as it will be all over your evening news.

Meanwhile, the SCOTUSblog has posted two fascinating segments from yesterday's oral arguments. 

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Posted in: Arnold Schwarzenegger,attorney,Attorney Carter Phillips,Chief Justice John Roberts,Justice Anthony Kennedy,Justice Samuel Alito,Justice Sonia Sotomayor,lawyer,prison,SCOTUS

Thanksgiving Dinner Conversation: SCOTUS Style

LawBlogger Editor's Note: This post is from Andrew Cohen, the Legal Analyst of the excellent blog Politics Daily. This is a fantasy recounting of a potential conversation between the Justices of the United States Supreme Court on the occasion of Thanksgiving Day, 2010. Cohen's humorous and tastefully irreverent insight is spot on; he also mentions several of the cases and issues covered by this Blog over the past year. Having stood before this august body of jurists last June, this blogger could actually see this conversation taking place. Enjoy:

The nine learned Americans, six men and three women, six Catholics and three Jews, all of them over 50 and one of them black, sat down for a traditional Thanksgiving meal. They said their prayers, they shook hands, they passed around the food, and then, as is their custom, they took turns speaking. There was no one else in the room.

“We have a lot to be thankful for,” John said solemnly. “We’ve survived another year, we’ve done our work as best we can, we still generally like each other on most days, and the Republic has not fallen apart. It’s a shame our brother John, Mr. Stevens, isn’t with us this year – I’m sure he’s watching football somewhere and glad to be rid of us – but we welcome Elena to the table and hope to share many more meals with her. Incidentally, I’d like to take a second to note that this meal is sponsored by the good folks at Citizens United. Citizens United, the corporation that’s been treated like a person for nearly one one-hundredth of a century.”

Antonin was the next to speak. "I am thankful, too, for the many freedoms I enjoy. The freedom to hunt. The freedom to speak. The freedom to yearn for a simpler time when there weren't so many constitutional amendments. The freedom to make all those liberal pantywaists apoplectic every time I open my mouth or draft an opinion. What a great country this is. Pass the yams, would you, Sam? Shoot, I've got gravy all over my shirt."

Then it was Anthony's turn. As usual, he was seated near the center of the rectangular table. "I am thankful," he said, "for my fellow Republican-appointed federal judges, the ones who spoke out last week against the Senate's refusal to confirm the president's judicial nominations. Even with life-tenure, it takes courage to do that. Incidentally, does anyone here want to borrow my Sharia Law Handbook? I'm boning up on it in the event the Oklahoma case reaches us, but I can always spare it for a night and start in again on Albanian law."

Next it was Clarence who, as usual, was seated to Antonin's right. "You starting again with that international law junk, Tony? Good lord," Clarence said. The other dinner guests were stunned. Clarence hadn't spoken like this in years. "I am thankful for being here. Whoever thought a fellow like me would end up sitting at this table for 20 years? But most of all I am thankful to my lovely wife, Virginia, for always having my back, even after all these years and all these allegations. She's the best and I plan to tell her that in court when her tea party group gets here as a litigant challenging the new health care laws."

"You are lucky, Clarence, to have your spouse," said Ruth. It was her first such meal without her beloved husband, Martin, who passed away this past June. "I think about my Marty all the time. I am thankful for all the wonderful years we spent together and for all the good graces we were given. I am thankful also for having Sonia and Elena here to watch the Lifetime Channel with me. It was lonely there for a while, especially after David and Bill stopped watching with me."

It was at this point in the dinner that Samuel, one of the younger members of the clan, shook his head and mouthed the words "not true." But it was not yet the time for him to speak.

It was instead Stephen's turn. "I am thankful for Amazon.com," he said, referring to his new book about the law. "Kidding. I'm getting just as much play on it from bookstores." Stephen had a habit of turning to look directly at his chums when he'd talk and he did so again on this night. "I am thankful for the rule of law, even when we don't explain it as clearly as we should to the American people. And I am thankful for our old friend Sandra, who has been so courageous in speaking out against judicial elections. Remember those fruit cobblers and lemon tarts she used to make for us?"

Sam spoke next. He was seated between Antonin and Clarence. "I am thankful for all the ordinary people out there who understand the Constitution," he said. "I am thankful for the American Spectator, for all the good food and talk a few weeks ago. And I am thankful for Roy Halladay, pitching that gem for my Phillies last month. If Roy Halladay ever has a case before the court, I am voting for him. Hey, John, can you please pass me the stuffing? Incidentally, as a reminder, today's turkey and all the trimmings are brought to me in part by the good folks at Citizens United -- Citizens United, the corporation that's been treated like a person for nearly one one-hundredth of a century."

Then it was Sonia's turn. It was her second such meal and she finally had decided to say something. "How can you people eat all this bland food all the time? Where are the arroz con gandules and pasteles y pernil?" More seriously, she went on: "I am thankful I don't have to hear about Frank Ricci anymore. I am thankful I don't have to be the last person to speak at every conference anymore. But mostly I am thankful I was finally able to rent out my apartment in New York City. In this economy, boy, you just never know."

Finally, Elena, the youngest, took her cue. "I am thankful this year for my new job and for the nice things that Miguel Estrada said about me this summer. I am mostly thankful, though, that I'll never have to sit through another lecture from [Oklahoma Sen.] Tom Coburn. Hey, speaking of food -- Tony, would you please pass the chicken lo mein?"

LawBlogger's final thoughts:  It sure would be nice if our Michigan Supreme Court Justices could be as civil as this fictional depiction of the SCOTUS justices.  Unfortunately, the yawning chasm within our state's high court has been all too public with secret tape recordings, press conferences and censure votes.

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Posted in: Andrew Cohen,Chief Justice John Roberts,Elena Kagan,Law Blogger,Michigan Supreme Court,SCOTUS