A Divided Supreme Court Hands Unions a Win. The U.S.
Supreme Court split 4-4 in Friedrichs v. CTA on Tuesday, thwarting a legal challenge that labor activists feared would deal a crippling blow to public-sector unions throughout the country. Complete List - Top 10 Controversial Supreme Court Cases. Supreme Court closely divided on abortion case. Hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside the Supreme Court on Wednesday ahead of hearings on the first abortion case in nearly a decade.
Ryan Connelly Holmes, USA TODAY WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court appeared deeply divided Wednesday over the most far-reaching abortion rights case it has considered in a generation, with the fate of abortion restrictions in many states on the line. The court's four liberal justices left little doubt they would vote to strike down a Texas law imposing tight regulations on abortion clinics and doctors, so the eight-member court — depleted by the death last month of Justice Antonin Scalia — almost certainly cannot issue a decision establishing a national precedent that would set tougher standards for abortion clinics coast to coast. But it seemed possible that Justice Anthony Kennedy, who likely holds the deciding vote, would seek to have the case returned to Texas for additional fact-finding, delaying any decision until next year at the earliest. 1 of 4.
Republicans begin to thaw on Obama's Supreme Court pick. Image copyright Reuters Several Republican senators have taken steps to consider Merrick Garland's nomination to the Supreme Court despite calls from their leadership to leave the selection to the next president.
Republican leader Mitch McConnell has said the Senate will not hold confirmation hearings. However, some Republican senators in tough re-election battles have agreed to meet Judge Garland. One of them, Mark Kirk of Illinois, will meet Mr Garland this week. President Barack Obama nominated Mr Garland, a veteran federal appeals court judge, to fill the vacancy left by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. Why Obama Nominated Merrick Garland for the Supreme Court. Antonin Scalia, US Supreme Court justice - obituary. When Democrat Jimmy Carter was elected Scalia returned to teaching.
Confirmations: The Battle over the Constitution - The Atlantic. The late Justice Antonin Scalia was larger than life.
A passionate defender of his own constitutional vision of textualism and originalism, Scalia would surely relish a similarly passionate debate over the constitutional vision of his successor—with both Republicans and Democrats defending their respective views of how the Constitution should be interpreted and what role the Supreme Court should play in American democracy. Instead of triggering a constitutional debate, however, Scalia’s tragic death has led to a political standoff, with both Republican and Democratic activists vowing to make the Court a key voting issue in the 2016 election. Everyone agrees that this is the most significant Supreme Court vacancy in a generation. But what competing visions of the Constitution, precisely, are voters choosing between? The constitutional stakes could hardly be higher. These prospective changes raise a number of provocative issues and critical constitutional questions.
How Scalia’s Death Affects This SCOTUS Term. With Senate Republicans vowing that they won't even consider President Obama's generally inoffensive nominee to replace the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, it looks like the Court will be down a justice through this term, and well into the next.
That's sparked concerns about how the Court will function for so long without a tie-breaking ninth member, but the justices insist it's not a big issue. Justice Samuel Alito said, "We'll deal with it," and Breyer noted that only a small number of cases come down to one vote anyway. It's true that having eight justices decide a case isn't all that uncommon. According to a CNBC analysis, temporary vacancies or recusals have led to ties in nearly one-in-five decisions passed down since 1946. C-SPAN Landmark Cases. Resetting the Post-Scalia Supreme Court. San Bernardino shooting: Statistics behind US gun violence. Image copyright Reuters In his first weekly address of 2016, Barack Obama vowed to take executive action to increase background checks on gun buyers.
His announcement followed another bloody year in the US in which thousands were killed and tens of thousands wounded by gunfire. Here's a look at some of the statistics behind the violence. The statistics Mass shootings: There were 372 mass shootings in the US in 2015, killing 475 people and wounding 1,870, according to the Mass Shooting Tracker, which catalogues such incidents. Source: Mass Shooting Tracker School shootings: There were 64 school shootings in 2015, according to a dedicated campaign group set up in the wake of the Sandy Hook elementary school massacre in Connecticut in 2012.
Source: Everytown for Gun SafetyResearch All shootings: Some 13,286 people were killed in the US by firearms in 2015, according to the Gun Violence Archive, and 26,819 people were injured [those figures exclude suicide]. Source: Gun Violence Archive. End the Gun Epidemic in America. Photo All decent people feel sorrow and righteous fury about the latest slaughter of innocents, in California. Law enforcement and intelligence agencies are searching for motivations, including the vital question of how the murderers might have been connected to international terrorism.
That is right and proper. But motives do not matter to the dead in California, nor did they in Colorado, Oregon, South Carolina, Virginia, Connecticut and far too many other places. Which Supreme Court Justices Vote Together Most and Least Often. The Supreme Court has completed its latest term after announcing its most hotly debated and consequential decisions.
Those rulings can overshadow broader trends. The nine justices have finished their fourth term together, and their thousands of votes in 280 signed decisions in argued cases in those years show some clear and sometimes surprising patterns. The Supreme Court . The Court and Democracy . Landmark Cases . Marbury v. Madison (1803) The landmark 1803 case Marbury v.
Madison marked the first time the Court asserted its role in reviewing federal legislation to determine its compatibility with the Constitution -- the function of judicial review. Above, a portrait of plaintiff William Marbury. Kentucky clerk ordered to jail for refusing to issue gay marriage license. ASHLAND, Ky. — For a moment there, it looked as though Kim Davis might stay out of jail.
The 49-year-old Kentucky county clerk, who grabbed the national spotlight by refusing in the face of multiple court orders to begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, had been given an out. She could remain a free woman, the judge said, if she gave permission to her deputies to sign the certificates in her stead. The judge gave her time to consult with her attorneys. But when the court reconvened after a short recess Thursday, Davis was not in her seat. An attorney explained that Davis, an Apostolic Christian, “does not grant her authority nor would allow any employee to issue those licenses.” Opponents divided on how — or whether — to resist justices’ ruling.
When Friday began, there were 14 states where same-sex couples still could not legally marry. By the afternoon — after a confusing day of orders and counter-orders by governors, attorneys general and county clerks — couples had married in all of them but one. The holdout was Louisiana. There, Attorney General James D. “Buddy” Caldwell (R) condemned the Supreme Court’s ruling, which legalized same-sex marriage nationwide, as “federal government intrusion into what should be a state issue.” Anthony Kennedy: how one man's evolution legalized marriage for millions.
His prose may lack the fiery eloquence of his US supreme court colleagues Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia, or the razor-sharp precision of chief justice John Roberts, but the majority opinion written by Justice Anthony Kennedy – granting a constitutional right to same-sex marriage across the United States – will go down as one of the most important legal documents in the history of the American civil rights struggle. Court-watchers were left in little doubt where most of the nine justices stood on marriage equality after two and a half hours of extended oral arguments held the hushed halls of the nation’s highest tribunal spellbound in April.
On one side, the court’s traditional liberals: Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan were withering in their view of the arguments advanced by Republican-controlled states that wanted to hold back the growing tide of legal rulings that backed gay marriage. He did. US Supreme Court rules gay marriage is legal nationwide - BBC News. The US Supreme Court has ruled that same-sex marriage is a legal right across the United States. It means the 14 states with bans on same-sex marriage will no longer be able to enforce them. Obamacare upheld by US supreme court as conservative justices rescue law. Barack Obama celebrated a decisive victory for his healthcare reforms after the US supreme court threw out a Republican-led legal challenge that could have gutted the legislation and stripped millions of Americans of their health insurance. “This was a good day for America,” the president said at the White House, marking a decisive turning point in his administration’s battle to reduce the number of uninsured Americans.
“The Affordable Care Act is here to stay,” he added, claiming that “as the dust has settled, there can be no doubt that this law is working”. The supreme court arguments on gay marriage, annotated for non-lawyers. Asian American groups file racial quotas complaint against Harvard University. An alliance of Asian American groups on Friday filed a federal complaint against Harvard University, saying it and other Ivy League institutions are using racial quotas to admit students other than high-scoring Asians. More than 60 Chinese, Indian, Korean and Pakistani groups came together for the complaint, which was filed with the civil rights offices at the justice and education departments.
They are calling for an investigation and say these schools should stop using racial quotas or racial balancing in admission. “We are seeking equal treatment regardless of race,” said Chunyan Li, a professor and civil rights activist, who said they’d rather universities use income rather than race in affirmative action policies. Harvard says its approach to admissions has been found to be “fully compliant with federal law”. NSA mass phone surveillance revealed by Edward Snowden ruled illegal.