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Author: Jason Harrow

By on May 22, 2008 at 10:51 am

On Tuesday, Akin Gump filed this reply brief in the case of Tyson Foods, Inc. v. de Ascencio.  The issue is "whether the time spent donning light protective gear constitutes 'work' under the Fair Labor Standards Act if the activities do not require a significant...

By on May 22, 2008 at 9:22 am

We have learned that Deputy Solicitor General Thomas Hungar resigned some time before General Clement announced his resignation, and he will be leaving the office soon.  He has not announced future plans.  Prior to becoming the Deputy Solicitor General, Hungar was a partner at the firm Gibson, Dunn...

By on May 15, 2008 at 4:06 pm

Last year, Tom posted this video of how he uses his iPhone, which some readers commented was potentially an effective form of advertising.  Tom decided to take it to a whole new, more direct level.  The results are below.  Enjoy! (UPDATE: We've changed the embedded player,...

By on May 14, 2008 at 4:20 pm

The Department of Justice has just issued the following press release. SOLICITOR GENERAL PAUL D. CLEMENT TO LEAVE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE WASHINGTON – Today, the Department of Justice announced that Solicitor General Paul D. Clement will end his current service to the Department on June 2, 2008. Nominated by...

By on May 12, 2008 at 7:03 pm

Last month, in an entry here, we posted the cert. petition in the case of Kay v. US, No. 07-1281.  Earlier today, two cert.-stage amicus briefs were filed in the case: this one on behalf of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and this one on...

By on May 9, 2008 at 3:58 pm

Today, the Stanford Supreme Court Litigation Clinic filed this opening merits brief in the case of Herring v. US, 07-513, to be argued during OT08.   Jeff Fisher is counsel of record, and with him on the brief are his fellow instructors in the Stanford Clinic:...

By on May 5, 2008 at 4:12 pm
The following column, featuring a selected petition up for consideration at the Justices’ private conference on May 8, appears in today’s edition of Legal Times (available to subscribers here). To see the full list of “petitions to watch” for Friday’s conference, click here. The U.S. Supreme Court has stayed far away from the fight regarding same-sex couples and the definition of marriage. But Yi Qiang Yang, a Chinese national seeking asylum in the United States, has recently asked the Court to enter the marriage-definition fray in a different context: Namely, does a spouse in a "traditional marriage"-a common Chinese practice involving a ceremony, but no official marriage license-have the same asylum rights as a legally married spouse? A per curiam opinion of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit recently affirmed an agency decision that such individuals should not be granted asylum, and the Court will decide whether to grant review of this question when it considers the case of Yang v. Mukasey, No. 07-756, at its private conference on May 8. The following week, the Court will consider taking up a similar appeal in Dong v. Department of Justice. In Yang's petition filed by Charles Rothfeld of the firm Mayer Brown, with the assistance of the Yale Law School Supreme Court Clinic, Yang relates a story overflowing with hot-button issues. The ordeal began in 2000 when Yang's "wife," Jiang Hui Ling, became pregnant-a violation of China's family planning laws as the couple was not legally married. (Only men over age 22 and women over 20 can get marriage licenses in China; Yang and Ling were 20 and 17 at the time.)

By on Apr 30, 2008 at 10:55 am
With the conclusion of the April sitting, a new StatPack is available for download here. The cover page lists the remaining dates when the Court will sit publicly in order to release Orders and opinions between now and the conclusion of the Term; for convenience, that list is reproduced after the jump.

By on Apr 29, 2008 at 1:00 pm

On Tuesday, May 6 at noon, the Cato Institute will hold a book forum entitled "The Dirty Dozen: How Twelve Supreme Court Cases Radically Expanded Government and Eroded Freedom." It will feature the book's authors, Robert A. Levy, a Senior Fellow in Constitutional Studies...

By on Apr 29, 2008 at 9:40 am
The following analysis was written by Richard Samp, Chief Counsel of the Washington Legal Foundation in Washington, DC. (Disclosure: the Washington Legal Foundation filed an amicus brief in this case in support of Respondents, urging the Court to uphold Indiana's Voter ID Law.) Disputes over election reform issues have had a highly partisan tone for the past several decades, dating back at least to adoption of the NVRA (the "motor-voter" law) in 1993. The partisan bickering only intensified following the 2000 Presidential election, from which the two major political parties drew diametrically opposed conclusions regarding what was wrong with American election laws. The partisan rancor is unlikely to subside any time soon in Congress or in the state legislatures. But with its decision Monday, the Supreme Court signaled that the federal courts should step back and not attempt to referee election reform disputes in the absence of evidence that a challenged state voting law either serves no relevant and legitimate state interests or imposes particularly severe and recurring burdens on the voting rights of identifiable classes of voters. The opinions of both Justice Stevens and Justice Scalia cautioned against any detailed scrutiny of the evidence supporting a State's determination that measures are necessary to protect the integrity and reliability of the electoral process. So long as the State's asserted bases for its voting regulation - here, an interest in preventing voter fraud and maintaining public confidence in elections - are relevant to its interest in protecting the integrity and reliability of elections, the Court signaled that it is very unlikely to second-guess the need for such regulation. Democrats argued that voter impersonation is rare and that voter ID requirements, by making voting a more onerous task, actually tend to undermine public confidence in elections; Republicans submitted evidence that, they asserted, demonstrated the precise opposite. The Court made clear that such factual disputes should be decided by legislatures, not courts. The court exhibited the same hands-off attitude that it has exhibited toward redistricting disputes in recent years.