Thursday, December 21, 2006
Top NY Court Upholds Panhandling Fines
The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle reports, “New York's top court today affirmed the decision of a Monroe County judge who upheld Rochester's panhandling ordinance, saying a city is entitled to fine aggressive panhandlers to keep them away from motorists.” According to the report, “The State Court of Appeals decided that Rochester's law was ‘narrowly tailored’ to avoid any violation of constitutional free speech rights.”
Supreme Court: 45% Have Favorable Opinion
According to the Rasmussen Reports, 45% of America’s likely voters have a favorable opinion of the United States Supreme Court while 35% have an unfavorable opinion and 20% are not sure. This is up from last year’s poll which showed that 40% of likely voters had a favorable opinion of the nation’s highest court.
Judge Sets Back Guantánamo Detainees
“For the first time,” reports The New York Times, “a court has affirmed that a law enacted this fall accomplishes what the White House and its Congressional supporters sought: stripping the federal judiciary of the authority to hear challenges from detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.” According to the report, “In a ruling Wednesday, Judge James Robertson of the Federal District Court said Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a prisoner at Guantánamo, could no longer contest his detention before a federal court because, Judge Robertson said, Congress this fall explicitly eliminated his right to file a habeas corpus challenge.”
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Justices Overturn Ruling in Case on Buttons in Court
The New York Times reports, “The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that the federal appeals court in California overstepped its authority when it granted a new trial to a murder defendant whose victim’s relatives sat at the trial, in the view of the jury, wearing buttons with the victim’s picture on them.” According to the report, the unanimous opinion relied on a technical interpretation of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which limits the ability of prisoners to appeal death penalty convictions.
Monday, December 11, 2006
Crosses Crusade Handed 2nd Defeat
The Las Cruces Sun-News reports, “A federal judge has handed a Las Cruces man a second defeat in his fight to rid public institutions of what he argues are religious symbols.” According to the report, Paul Weinbaum, the plaintiff in the case, had sued the school district in arguing that its use of three crosses in its logos and on school grounds violated the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution by using public funds to promote religion.
Friday, December 08, 2006
Scope of 2nd Amendment's Questioned
“In a case that could shape firearms laws nationwide, attorneys for the District of Columbia argued Thursday that the Second Amendment right to bear arms applies only to militias, not individuals.” According to The Associated Press, “At issue in the case before a federal appeals court is whether the Second Amendment right to ‘keep and bear arms’ applies to all people or only to ‘a well regulated militia,’” pointing out, “If the dispute makes it to the high court, it would be the first case in nearly 70 years to address the amendment's scope.”
Supreme Court Will Review Murder Cases
“The Supreme Court,” reports The Associated Press, “agreed to review a murder case in which a judge excluded reliable evidence that someone other than the defendant was the killer, one of three criminal appeals the justices accepted Thursday.” The Court’s decision to review the case stems from decisions by appellate courts reviewing the conviction of John Fry for the murders of two people in northern California in 1992. The appellate courts found the trial judge should have allowed testimony from a witness who overheard her cousin confessing to the crimes.
Antitrust Ambiguity to Be on Justices’ Docket
The New York Times reports, “The Supreme Court added two important antitrust cases on Thursday to its calendar for the current term.” According to the report, “Both cases, granted at the request of defendants in private antitrust suits, are likely to lead to clarification of areas of antitrust law that have increasingly become unsettled.”
Thursday, December 07, 2006
Dwindling Docket Mystifies Supreme Court
This New York Times article discusses the trend noticed by many Supreme Court watchers that the nation’s High Court is taking fewer cases than it historically has. The article begins, “On the Supreme Court’s color-coded master calendar, which was distributed months before the term began on the first Monday in October, Dec. 6 is marked in red to signify a day when the justices are scheduled to be on the bench, hearing arguments. The courtroom, however, was empty on Wednesday, and for a simple reason: The court was out of cases. The question is, where have all the cases gone?”
Tuesday, December 05, 2006
Immigrant Wins in Drug Deportation Case
The Associated Press reports, “The Supreme Court on Tuesday made it easier for some immigrants convicted of drug possession under state law to remain in the United States rather than being subject to deportation.” “In an 8-1 decision,” the report explains, “the justices ruled in favor of an immigrant who pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting possession of drugs in South Dakota for telling someone where to obtain cocaine.”
Monday, December 04, 2006
Court Stays Out of Abortion Records Case
According to The Associated Press, “The Kansas Supreme Court refused Thursday to intervene on behalf of two abortion clinics in a dispute with the state attorney general over patient records that were leaked to ‘The O'Reilly Factor.’” The report explains that the court’s inaction came in response to a request by the clinics for the court to seize the records of 90 patients from Attorney General Phill Kline and appoint a special prosecutor to investigate how Fox News' Bill O'Reilly got access to abortion records for a Nov. 3 broadcast.
Appeals Court: Soledad Cross Measure Constitutional
“A San Diego appeals court ruled Thursday that Proposition A, a voter-approved 2005 measure which authorized transferring land underneath the Mount Soledad cross to the federal government was constitutional,” reports San Diego’s Union-Tribune. According to the report, “The justices concluded that the initiative was religiously neutral and city voters did not endorse the establishment of any religion when they passed it by a huge margin.”
