SCOTUS Watch

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Moliere
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by Moliere »

Gorsuch and Sotomayor Fault SCOTUS for Declining to Hear Important Criminal Justice Case
As Gorsuch noted, the Sixth Amendment right to cross-examine one's accusers is supposed to serve as a safeguard in cases like this against the introduction of erroneous evidence. Yet here "the engine of cross-examination was left unengaged, and the Sixth Amendment was violated." For that reason, and others, Gorsuch and Sotomayor faulted their colleagues for failing to take the case.

This is not the first time that Gorsuch and Sotomayor have joined forces on the criminal justice front. Just last month, for example, during oral arguments in Gundy v. U.S., the two justices seemed to agree that Congress violated the Constitution by, in Gorsuch's words, giving "a blank check to the attorney general." They've also been operating on similar wavelengths in Fourth Amendment cases.

While it's common nowadays to think of the Supreme Court exclusively in terms of its conservative and liberal blocs, Gorsuch and Sotomayor have shown that the story is more complicated when it comes to questions of criminal justice.
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by gilraen »

Supreme Court refuses to hear case on whether states can block Medicaid payments to Planned Parenthood
The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear a case brought by Republican-led states that were seeking to defund Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood and other organizations that provide women's reproductive health services.

The case does not involve federal money for abortion-related services. That is barred by federal law. Rather, it involves an effort by two states to block Medicaid funding for some abortion providers that, like Planned Parenthood, get Medicaid funding for providing other services to low-income women, services like cancer screenings, prenatal services, birth control and ultrasounds.
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by GreenGoo »

Yay.
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SCOTUS Watch

Post by Carpet_pissr »

Holman wrote:
I’m sorry, I know it’s shallow, but he just LOOKS like a spoiled, entitled prick.

So does Kavanaugh, for that matter.
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by GreenGoo »

The biggest crime of the drumpf administration is that drumpf will be embedded in American history for the rest of time. He deserves to be forgotten by future generations. Now that can't happen.

That makes me sadgry.
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by Carpet_pissr »

Sangry?
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by GreenGoo »

Whatever floats your boat. Sounds too much like sangria to me.

I prefer mine.
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by Blackhawk »

GreenGoo wrote: Mon Dec 10, 2018 7:32 pm He deserves to be forgotten by future generations.
God, no. Never forgotten. Ever.

He needs to be remembered. He needs to be remembered as a cautionary tale, both to the voting public, and to other politicians that consider following his example. Kid politicians need to sit around during sleepovers with flashlights, telling each other the Tale of Trump, shivering with fear and feeling ill.

If we forget him, we repeat him.
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GreenGoo
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by GreenGoo »

Blackhawk wrote: Tue Dec 11, 2018 1:59 am If we forget him, we repeat him.
Right, but that's just a saying. We repeat history because we are victims of human nature, not because we don't know what we do is wrong.

It may take a few generations to repeat the mistakes that resulted in him being in the WH, but I don't think the current generation is learning anything, and it's happening right now.
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by Remus West »

GreenGoo wrote: Tue Dec 11, 2018 2:14 am
Blackhawk wrote: Tue Dec 11, 2018 1:59 am If we forget him, we repeat him.
Right, but that's just a saying. We repeat history because we are victims of human nature, not because we don't know what we do is wrong.

It may take a few generations to repeat the mistakes that resulted in him being in the WH, but I don't think the current generation is learning anything, and it's happening right now.
To piggy back on this point, I don't think anyone has forgotten Hitler but there are so many striking parallels between Hitler's rise to power and Trump getting elected that it is hard to say we are not repeating history already. We may (and as much as I hate tRump I don't think we do) not go down the same road the whole way to attempting genocide but the lessons regarding demagogs were certainly not learned from history even if the demagog himself and his actions are deeply remembered.
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by Blackhawk »

Remus West wrote: Tue Dec 11, 2018 8:55 am To piggy back on this point, I don't think anyone has forgotten Hitler but there are so many striking parallels between Hitler's rise to power
We absolutely have forgotten Hitler. We remember Hitler's actions - his genocide, his war, but I don't think I was ever taught, nor have my kids ever been taught, the details of how he rose to power. That's something I had to learn on my own.
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by LawBeefaroni »

Blackhawk wrote: Tue Dec 11, 2018 10:39 am
Remus West wrote: Tue Dec 11, 2018 8:55 am To piggy back on this point, I don't think anyone has forgotten Hitler but there are so many striking parallels between Hitler's rise to power
We absolutely have forgotten Hitler. We remember Hitler's actions - his genocide, his war, but I don't think I was ever taught, nor have my kids ever been taught, the details of how he rose to power. That's something I had to learn on my own.
Hitler was the book. Trump is the movie.




And I wouldn't ever say history is forgotten. It's just inconvenient. No one wants to wage war against a tyrant until they are forced to. I'm not going to go to jail or lose my job or all my property to halt the rise of what could a an evil regime. But once living under one, I'd probably be willing to die fighting it. Human nature.

Or maybe it's the boiling frog thing.
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malchior
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by malchior »

So sounds like Ginsburg has lung cancer. FFS. This is going to get ugly.

Edit: By the by, she is expected to make a recovery. However this is the darkest timeline so I just assume the worst and hope to be pleasantly surprised.
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by El Guapo »

malchior wrote: Fri Dec 21, 2018 1:39 pm So sounds like Ginsburg has lung cancer. FFS. This is going to get ugly.

Edit: By the by, she is expected to make a recovery. However this is the darkest timeline so I just assume the worst and hope to be pleasantly surprised.
Yeah, apparently she had surgery and it looks like they got everything (at least from what they can tell at this point). Still pretty scary, though.

And I know it's not super fair to be mad at her for not retiring in 2013...but I still kind of am.
Black Lives Matter.
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by Unagi »

the darkest timeline is no time for 'super fair'.
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by malchior »

El Guapo wrote: Fri Dec 21, 2018 2:27 pmAnd I know it's not super fair to be mad at her for not retiring in 2013...but I still kind of am.
Same here but I did come across an interesting story in my random wanders that humanizes the decision to stay a bit even if I think it was wrong.

My reaction upon reading the story:
Spoiler:
I get that she saw first hand what happened to O'Connor which I never heard about before. However, IMO this had nothing to do with her or a substitute 'liberal' colleague being male or female. It was mostly based on age as a risk factor. In 5 years I expect to here something similar about Breyer, if he is still around and we have a D President.
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by Isgrimnur »


Spoiler:
Fox News just slipped in Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s obituary segment opener
The Hill
“We need to apologize. … A technical error in the control room triggered a graphic of RBG with a date on it,” co-host Steve Doocy said later in the program. “We don’t want to make it seem anything other than that was a mistake. That was an accident.”
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GreenGoo
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by GreenGoo »

Obituaries are often created ahead of time, and especially for high visibility people and especially for media that thrive on timely and first to the gate reporting, so I totally understand having the graphic on hand. And mistakes happen, so that's life as well.

That said, you need to be extra careful about making mistakes about someone dying. That's a big deal for people in general.

Shrug, not good optics but it's hardly outrageous. The fact that these guys are dicks and vultures just waiting for her to die so they can cackle about another nomination for the worst administration in history doesn't enter into it. :wink:
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by em2nought »

Suggestions for a modern day Prisoner of Zenda: NCIS Los Angeles' Linda Hunt

Image
Enlarge Image
Technically, he shouldn't be here.
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by Isgrimnur »

WaPo
The Supreme Court on Tuesday said it will examine New York City’s ban on carrying a licensed and unloaded handgun outside the city limits, the first Second Amendment challenge it has accepted in nearly a decade.

The decision to hear the case in the term that begins in October may signal that the reinforced conservative majority on the court is ready to consider more laws that restrict gun rights.

New York’s law is not replicated elsewhere: It permits transporting handguns only to firing ranges within the city. Those who challenged the law have a licenses to keep a handgun at their homes. Petitioners included those who want to take their guns to firing ranges or competitions outside the city, and one who wanted to take the gun to his second home upstate.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit ruled for the city. It said petitioners had not shown there was inadequate access to one of the seven firing ranges in the city, that petitioners could not rent a firearm if they wanted to go to a range elsewhere, or that the upstate homeowner could not get a permit to keep a second handgun there.
...
The case is New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. City of New York.
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

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The Supreme Court on Thursday blocked a Louisiana law that its opponents say could have left the state with only one doctor in a single clinic authorized to provide abortions.

The vote was 5 to 4, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. joining the court’s four-member liberal wing.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/07/us/p ... court.html
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

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WaPo
Justice Clarence Thomas called Tuesday for reconsidering the Supreme Court’s landmark decision making it more difficult for public officials to claim defamation as the court turned down a request from an accuser of Bill Cosby.

The court declined to take the case of Kathrine McKee, who accused Cosby of raping her more than 40 years ago. She sued after Cosby’s attorney leaked a letter that she said distorted her background to “damage her reputation for truthfulness and honesty” and to shame her.

But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit said McKee had “thrust” herself into the national #MeToo movement with her allegations. As a public figure, the court said, she had to show that comments about her were made with “actual malice” and disregard for the truth, the standard set by the Supreme Court’s 1964 decision in New York Times v. Sullivan.

Thomas said he agreed with his colleagues not to accept McKee’s “factbound” appeal.

But he launched a detailed critique of the landmark libel ruling, which he said was a “policy-driven” decision “masquerading as constitutional law.” No other justice joined his concurrence.
...
But Thomas and the late Justice Antonin Scalia have said the court may have intruded into a space in which it was not needed.

“We should not continue to reflexively apply this policy driven approach to the Constitution,” Thomas wrote. “Instead, we should carefully examine the original meaning of the First and Fourteenth Amendments. If the Constitution does not require public figures to satisfy an actual-malice standard in state-law defamation suits, then neither should we.”

The media for decades has depended on New York Times v. Sullivan as a shield for reporting on public figures. But Thomas said the late Justice Byron White had also expressed concern after he was in the majority in the case.

“Like Justice White, I assume that New York Times and our other constitutional decisions displacing state defamation law have been popular in some circles, ‘but this is not the road to salvation for a court of law,’ ” Thomas wrote, quoting White. “. . . We did not begin meddling in this area until 1964, nearly 175 years after the First Amendment was ratified. The States are perfectly capable of striking an acceptable balance between encouraging robust public discourse and providing a meaningful remedy for reputational harm.”
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by GreenGoo »

But malice would still be a part of the requirement. Barring actual communication stating malice as a motivator, that seems a nearly impossible hurdle to overcome with regard to media reporting.

I guess my point is that defamation seems incredibly difficult to prove even without "special protections" vs. public officials. This seems neither here nor there as Thomas appears to be alone in this thought. I guess future developments are always possible.
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by geezer »

GreenGoo wrote: Wed Feb 20, 2019 12:28 pm But malice would still be a part of the requirement. Barring actual communication stating malice as a motivator, that seems a nearly impossible hurdle to overcome with regard to media reporting.

I guess my point is that defamation seems incredibly difficult to prove even without "special protections" vs. public officials. This seems neither here nor there as Thomas appears to be alone in this thought. I guess future developments are always possible.
I need to go back and re-read this great book, but my general recollection is that Clarence Thomas will have a hard time reconciling his "strict constructionalism" with the reality of "the press" such as it was in the era surrounding the founding of the United States.

(Not that that conflict matters to most originalists, really...)
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by Isgrimnur »

Reuters
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday threw out an appeals court ruling in favor of a woman’s equal pay claim against a California county because the judge who authored the decision died before it was actually issued.

In a unsigned opinion with no noted dissents from any of the nine justices, the high court directed the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider the case because of Judge Stephen Reinhardt’s death.
...
The Supreme Court faulted the 9th Circuit’s decision to allow Reinhardt to participate in the ruling.

“That practice effectively allowed a deceased judge to exercise the judicial power of the United States after his death. But federal judges are appointed for life, not for eternity,” the high court said.
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by GreenGoo »

"If judges can rule from beyond the grave, what's the point in killing them?" asked newly appointed Justice Kavanaugh.

In all seriousness this seems like a completely reasonable outcome, barring legal details that I don't know or am not equipped to understand.
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by Isgrimnur »

While the ruling by the 11-judge 9th Circuit panel was unanimous, the judges differed over the legal rationale. The appeals court ruled that salary history cannot be used, whether alone or with other factors, to justify gender-based pay gaps.
...
The California legislature in 2016 changed state law so that prior salary cannot be used as a defense to justify gender pay disparities.
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

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Sovereign immunity for states
The Supreme Court’s conservative majority overturned a 41-year-old precedent Monday, prompting a pointed warning from liberal justices about “which cases the court will overrule next.”

The issue in Monday’s 5 to 4 ruling was one of limited impact: whether states have sovereign immunity from private lawsuits in the courts of other states. In 1979, the Supreme Court ruled that there is no constitutional right to such immunity, although states are free to extend it to one another and often do.

But the court’s conservative majority overruled that decision, saying there was an implied right in the Constitution that means states “could not be haled involuntarily before each other’s courts,” in the words of Justice Clarence Thomas, who wrote Monday’s decision.

Thomas acknowledged the departure from the legal doctrine of stare decisis, in which courts are to abide by settled law without a compelling reason to overrule the decision.

But he said the court’s decision four decades ago in Nevada v. Hall “is contrary to our constitutional design and the understanding of sovereign immunity shared by the states that ratified the Constitution. Stare decisis does not compel continued adherence to this erroneous precedent.”
...
The case at hand was at the Supreme Court for the third time. California’s Franchise Tax Board accused Gilbert P. Hyatt of basically faking his move from the Golden State to Nevada in the early 1990s to avoid paying income tax.

But the way investigators went about their work — looking through his garbage and interrogating family members and business associates — prompted Hyatt to sue the auditors in Nevada court. He won and was awarded nearly $500 million, a figure that has been reduced through years of litigation to $100,000.

The California tax board contends that it never should have been called into Nevada court. When an earlier iteration of the case was heard two years ago, the Supreme Court split 4 to 4 on whether the 1979 decision allowing such suits was correct. At the time, the court had only eight members because of the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.

The case is Franchise Tax Board of California v. Hyatt.
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by pr0ner »

Ugh. Gil Hyatt.
Hodor.
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by Isgrimnur »

Venture Beat
Gil Hyatt has gotten many rewards from his days as an inventor. In 1990, he received a fundamental but controversial patent on what he called the first microprocessor, or computer on a chip. It was 22 years late, but he nosed out rivals such as Intel in being the first to file for a patent application in 1968. He then licensed that patent and 22 of his 69 other patents to Philips Electronics, which then began enforcing them on the rest of the electronics industry and collecting royalties.

Philips’ efforts netted Hyatt more than $150 million, though the state of California would try for 24 years to take a big chunk of that money for taxes. It argued that Hyatt pretended to move to Las Vegas in 1991, but in 2017, he finally prevailed in convincing the tax board that he really did move. But at 80 years old, Hyatt still isn’t resting on the rewards he got. In fact, he’s still in a bitter battle with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

He claims the office is sitting on his remaining applications, and is waiting for him to die. Hyatt sued to get the patent office to issue his remaining patent applications. The patent office declined to comment, citing the litigation.
...
Hyatt knows he was never much loved in Silicon Valley, as he was viewed as one of the worst cases of a “submarine patent,” filing continuation after continuation until the industry grew to a huge size and he eventually got his patent — allowing for a huge payday from royalties. Patent law gives inventors 17 years of royalties, based on the issue date.
...
But during discovery in his ongoing litigation, he was further outraged to find that the patent office had a special way of flagging potentially controversial patents. Those flagged applications went all the way to the leadership of the patent office, and they were often never granted by the office. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office called this the Sensitive Applications Warning System (or SAWS), and it operated in secret for decades, based on the results of 31 Freedom of Information Act requests and court discovery unearthed by Hyatt and his nonprofit American Center of Equitable Treatment.
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by pr0ner »

See above. :P
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by Isgrimnur »

Vaguebooking triggers me like a dog seeing a squirrel.
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by malchior »

Already seeing some rumblings that this is a warning shot that the Conservative court may encourage other suits to challenge what people thought of as settled law. *cough* Roe v. Wade. Funny enough the last week or two have legal policy wonks saying that Conservatives in the south overplayed their hand there with the heartbeat laws. Now that remains a very pregnant question (sorry!). I have to still imagine Roberts doesn't want to go as far as overturning Roe but I guess we'll see. If so then we will have to wonder how partisan the courts will go as well. Anyway, this is not encouraging. Still, it is only one result so it probably is not the end of the world just yet either.
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by pr0ner »

Isgrimnur wrote: Mon May 13, 2019 3:49 pm Vaguebooking triggers me like a dog seeing a squirrel.
Given my job, the name Gil Hyatt triggers me. :lol:
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by Holman »

Isgrimnur wrote: Mon May 13, 2019 3:00 pm Sovereign immunity for states
The Supreme Court’s conservative majority overturned a 41-year-old precedent Monday, prompting a pointed warning from liberal justices about “which cases the court will overrule next.”
Kavanaugh's whole job is to overturn precedent.
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by pr0ner »

Holman wrote: Mon May 13, 2019 6:39 pm
Isgrimnur wrote: Mon May 13, 2019 3:00 pm Sovereign immunity for states
The Supreme Court’s conservative majority overturned a 41-year-old precedent Monday, prompting a pointed warning from liberal justices about “which cases the court will overrule next.”
Kavanaugh's whole job is to overturn precedent.
I know a couple people on patent blogs I read hope Kavanaugh does just that with patent law (one calls it the "Kavanaugh scissors"). However, I am not entirely sure they're aware of exactly what else Kavanaugh wrecking precedent would entail.
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by Pyperkub »

Isgrimnur wrote: Mon May 13, 2019 3:30 pm Venture Beat
Gil Hyatt has gotten many rewards from his days as an inventor. In 1990, he received a fundamental but controversial patent on what he called the first microprocessor, or computer on a chip. It was 22 years late, but he nosed out rivals such as Intel in being the first to file for a patent application in 1968. He then licensed that patent and 22 of his 69 other patents to Philips Electronics, which then began enforcing them on the rest of the electronics industry and collecting royalties.

Philips’ efforts netted Hyatt more than $150 million, though the state of California would try for 24 years to take a big chunk of that money for taxes. It argued that Hyatt pretended to move to Las Vegas in 1991, but in 2017, he finally prevailed in convincing the tax board that he really did move. But at 80 years old, Hyatt still isn’t resting on the rewards he got. In fact, he’s still in a bitter battle with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

He claims the office is sitting on his remaining applications, and is waiting for him to die. Hyatt sued to get the patent office to issue his remaining patent applications. The patent office declined to comment, citing the litigation.
...
Hyatt knows he was never much loved in Silicon Valley, as he was viewed as one of the worst cases of a “submarine patent,” filing continuation after continuation until the industry grew to a huge size and he eventually got his patent — allowing for a huge payday from royalties. Patent law gives inventors 17 years of royalties, based on the issue date.
...
But during discovery in his ongoing litigation, he was further outraged to find that the patent office had a special way of flagging potentially controversial patents. Those flagged applications went all the way to the leadership of the patent office, and they were often never granted by the office. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office called this the Sensitive Applications Warning System (or SAWS), and it operated in secret for decades, based on the results of 31 Freedom of Information Act requests and court discovery unearthed by Hyatt and his nonprofit American Center of Equitable Treatment.
INterestingly enough in the arguments:
The argument also featured an interesting debate about what to make of the friend-of-the-court briefs filed by a great majority of states. Waxman pointed out that, all told, 47 states had expressed support for overruling Hall. That impressive display suggests that states generally have use for immunity in one another’s courts.
Black Lives definitely Matter Lorini!

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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by Isgrimnur »

Military Times
The Supreme Court again on Monday opted not to hear a challenge to the legal precedent barring individuals from suing the military for medical malpractice, a decision blasted by Justice Clarence Thomas as short-sighted and unfair.

“Unfortunate repercussions — denial of relief to military personnel and distortions of other areas of law to compensate — will continue to ripple through our jurisprudence as long as the Court refuses to reconsider (this issue),” Thomas wrote in his dissent to the court’s decision not to take up the challenge.

The move once again shifts from the courts to Congress debate on how to fix problems surrounding the Feres Doctrine, a 1950 Supreme Court decision that blocks troops from claiming medical malpractice damages for actions related to their military service. At the time, the court found that military personnel injured by the negligence of another federal employee cannot sue under the Federal Tort Claims Act.
...
Military officials have repeatedly argued the precedent is needed to prevent frivolous lawsuits related to combat decisions. They also note that the Defense Department already has a compensation system in place for service members who die while on duty.

But critics have said the Feres doctrine has been too broadly interpreted, depriving troops of compensation and justice that they could receive if they were civilians.

Thomas wrote that by refusing to re-examine the issue, the Supreme Court has allowed the Feres doctrine to be twisted and strengthened over the years. He also lamented that Congress could find ways to address the issue “but it did not.”
It's almost as if people are the problem.
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Pyperkub
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by Pyperkub »

Isgrimnur wrote: Thu May 23, 2019 1:24 pm Military Times
The Supreme Court again on Monday opted not to hear a challenge to the legal precedent barring individuals from suing the military for medical malpractice, a decision blasted by Justice Clarence Thomas as short-sighted and unfair.

“Unfortunate repercussions — denial of relief to military personnel and distortions of other areas of law to compensate — will continue to ripple through our jurisprudence as long as the Court refuses to reconsider (this issue),” Thomas wrote in his dissent to the court’s decision not to take up the challenge.

The move once again shifts from the courts to Congress debate on how to fix problems surrounding the Feres Doctrine, a 1950 Supreme Court decision that blocks troops from claiming medical malpractice damages for actions related to their military service. At the time, the court found that military personnel injured by the negligence of another federal employee cannot sue under the Federal Tort Claims Act.
...
Military officials have repeatedly argued the precedent is needed to prevent frivolous lawsuits related to combat decisions. They also note that the Defense Department already has a compensation system in place for service members who die while on duty.

But critics have said the Feres doctrine has been too broadly interpreted, depriving troops of compensation and justice that they could receive if they were civilians.

Thomas wrote that by refusing to re-examine the issue, the Supreme Court has allowed the Feres doctrine to be twisted and strengthened over the years. He also lamented that Congress could find ways to address the issue “but it did not.”
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Yeah, sounds like it would be Congress' Job to fix this rather than the Supremes carving out exceptions on their own.
Black Lives definitely Matter Lorini!

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Isgrimnur
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by Isgrimnur »

NBC News
The Supreme Court declined on Monday to change the longstanding rule that says putting someone on trial more than once for the same crime does not violate the Constitution's protection against double jeopardy — a case that drew attention because of its possible implications for President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort.

The 7-2 ruling was a defeat for an Alabama man, Terance Gamble, convicted of robbery in 2008 and pulled over seven years later for a traffic violation. When police found a handgun in his car, he was prosecuted under Alabama's law barring felons from possessing firearms. The local U.S. attorney then charged Gamble with violating a similar federal law. Because of the added federal conviction, his prison sentence was extended by nearly three years.

The Fifth Amendment says no person shall be "twice put in jeopardy of life or limb" for the same offense. But for more than 160 years, the Supreme Court has ruled that being prosecuted once by a state and again in federal court, or the other way around, for the same crime doesn't violate the protection against double jeopardy because the states and the federal government are "separate sovereigns."

The case attracted more than the usual attention because of the prospect that Trump may pardon Manafort, who was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison for violating federal fraud laws. A presidential pardon could free him from federal prison, but it would not protect him from being prosecuted on similar state charges, which were filed by New York. Overturning the rule allowing separate prosecutions for the same offenses would have worked in Manafort's favor.
It's almost as if people are the problem.
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