• Supreme Court on Trial

    Supreme Court on Trial

    By: Gregory Segal In the summer of 2012, the eyes of the country looked toward the Supreme Court as it debated the Affordable Care Act.  Given this recent focus on the Court, conversation regarding its functionality has become more prevalent.  However, this discourse is lacking: while people usually identify problems with the court, proposals of specific ways to resolve these [...]

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  • The Justice Has No Clothes

    The Justice Has No Clothes

    Earlier this summer, in Arizona v. United States, Justice Scalia openly criticized the President’s decision to enact the DREAM Act through executive order, allowing illegal immigrants who had entered the U.S. as children and who had in the meantime enrolled in or graduated high school or served in the armed forces to remain in the country. Scalia then framed the [...]

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  • States’ Rights and Gay Rights

    States’ Rights and Gay Rights

    In 1958, Richard Loving, a white man, and Mildred Jeter, a black woman, lay in bed in their Virginia home. Their marriage license, issued in the District of Columbia, hung over their bed. They were torn from that bed when a grand jury indicted them for violating Virginia’s anti-miscegenation laws. According to the State Supreme Court of Virginia, these laws [...]

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  • Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, and Your Papers

    Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, and Your Papers

    My favorite part of Wednesday’s arguments in Arizona v. United States came in an exchange between conservative lawyer extraordinaire Paul Clement and Justice Sonia Sotomayor: JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: What happens if — this is the following call — the call to the — to the Federal Government. Yes, he’s an illegal alien. No, we don’t want to detain him. What does the [...]

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  • The Worst Thing Ever Said By Anyone Ever

    The Worst Thing Ever Said By Anyone Ever

    “Ultimately, I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.” I know, I was shocked when I read it too, ladies and gentlemen. It’s hard to believe that such vitriol, such unhinged rage, would be directed at [...]

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  • We Are the Law

    We Are the Law

    Supreme Court Justice, baseball savior and Sesame Street star Sonia Sotomayor visited Penn today for the official opening of Golkin Hall, the new law school building. Your faithful-ish correspondent was in the room and got all the juicy quotes. And by juicy I mean inspiring and profound. In dedicating a new building for Penn Law today, Justice Sotomayor was following [...]

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  • Sick Day

    Sick Day

    If you listened carefully at 10:00 AM Monday, you could hear every pundit, legal journalist, and court watcher simultaneously squeal with glee. The Supreme Court announced that it would hear what some are calling the case of the century: the constitutionality of President Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Since the actual cases go by the remarkably unsexy names Department [...]

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  • Supreme Distractions

    Supreme Distractions

    It’s been something of a depressing time for news junkies. The Republican primary is so boring that we have to resort to making jokes at the expense of the incompetent (at least all these debates are keeping Rick Perry from actually running Texas). The president is leaving town for balmy beaches and economic discussions. The economies of Europe are not [...]

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  • Liberal Justices, What Liberal Justices?

    It’s pretty common knowledge that the Supreme Court is becoming more and more conservative. Whether or not you believe this is a good thing depends on where you land on the political spectrum. The truth is liberal presidents are simply less likely to appoint radically liberal justices. Obama had not one, but TWO chances to appoint someone to the Supreme [...]

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  • Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night

    Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night

    Warning: There are some graphic and pretty icky details in this post. So the state of Texas went ahead and executed Humberto Leal. For those of you not in the know, Leal was a U.S.-born Mexican citizen, who raped a 16-year-old girl and then bludgeoned her to death with a 40-pound chunk of asphalt. Police discovered the girl’s corpse the [...]

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