Greetings, Court fans!
After a week-long hiatus, the Court issued another order list Monday, adding three more cases to its 2009 docket.
For labor lawyers, New Process Steel, L.P. v NLRB (08-1457), will be the case to watch. The issue: “Does the National Labor Relations Board have authority to decide cases with only two sitting members, where 29 U.S.C. § 153(b) provides that ‘three


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Greetings, Court fans!
The Court issued a per curiam opinion this week, Bobby v. Van Hook (09-144), where it addressed the “ineffective assistance of counsel at the sentencing phase” defense. Van Hook was convicted for murder in Ohio state court, after he lured a homosexual man home from a bar, robbed, killed, and mutilated him. After his various state appeals were denied, he filed


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Greetings, Court fans!
The Court left us with a handful of interesting tidbits last week: a per curiam decision in Porter v. McCollum (08-10537), where the Court overturned a death sentence based on counsel’s failure to adduce sufficient mitigating evidence at the sentencing phase of Porter’s trial; statements “concurring in” and “respecting” the denial of cert in Johnson v. Bredersen (09-7839), a case


Read More Porter v. McCollum (08-10537), Johnson v. Bredersen (09-7839), Webster V. Cooper (08-10314) and order list

Greetings, Court fans!
The Term has begun in earnest, with the first four signed opinions released yesterday. They are an odd bunch, with two of the four failing to answer the questions presented. I’ll begin with those that did.
The newcomer, Justice Sotomayor, authored the Court’s nearly unanimous opinion in Mohawk Industries, Inc. v. Carpenter (08-678), concluding that district court decisions requiring allegedly privileged


Read More Mohawk Industries, Inc. v. Carpenter (08-678), Beard v. Kindler (08-992), Alvarez v. Smith (08-351) and Union Pacific Railroad Company v. Brotherhood of Local Engineers and Trainmen (08-604)


Greetings, Court fans!

It has been a pretty uneventful pre-holiday week. The Court granted cert in three new cases. In the most noteworthy, Ontario, CA v. Quon (08-1332), a SWAT team employee of the city felt that his privacy was invaded when the city viewed sexually explicit text messages he sent to his girlfriend on an employer-provided pager. The Court granted cert to address

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