Supreme Court

(Remarks delivered at a Sept. 19 vigil in Davis honoring Justice Ginsburg’s life and legacy)

We are here tonight in Davis Central Park to celebrate the life of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She has always been a part of my professional life and our lives have intersected many times. I will miss her.

Episode 43 of the “What Trump Can Teach Us About Con Law” podcast reviews some of the big cases of the past Supreme Court term and considers the constitutionality of the federal policing of the Portland protests. Listen to the podcast

[Cross-posted from Trumpconlaw.com]

The 2019 Term is not quite over, but the Court today decided its final immigration case.

Immigration proved to comprise a significant part of the U.S. Supreme Court's docket for the 2019 Term.  Eight decisions directly or indirectly address immigration issues.  The eight cases are a couple more than the Court's average number of immigration decisions in a Term. 

At the end of the term when the Supreme Court hands down its most controversial rulings, the Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision, with the a majority opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts, rejected the Trump administration’s attempt to dismantle the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy.

"What Trump Can Teach Us About Con Law" podcast, episode 41: The Supreme Court may not be able to meet in person, but they are still doing business over conference call. This month, they've considered three cases about Donald Trump's finances, and whether they should be released to congressional committees and prosecutors in New York. What does history tell us about these cases which could have major consequences for executive power? Listen here

This is an essay about two words no one wants to see in the same story: guns and schools. But this isn’t about school shootings. This is instead about two starkly different social-activist groups: gun-rights proponents and educational-equity advocates. It’s about their steadfast pursuit of wildly divergent civil rights. It’s about a surprising similarity in their legal strategies. And more than anything, it’s a story about law and ideology, and the difficulty of deciding the former without the influence of the latter.  

Few lawyers would accuse the Immigration and Nationality Act of being well drafted. The current law was enacted in 1952, but includes bits and pieces dating back to the founding era, along with major new features that are not always well integrated into the whole. In addition to evoking memories of a time when congressional relief for unauthorized migrants was more possible, United States v.

The Trump administration has implemented unprecedented immigration enforcement policies, prompting challenges from state governments, advocacy groups and the University of California. 

On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in three cases in which the University of California and others are challenging the Trump administration’s termination of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy. 

Lost in the shuffle of a busy October at the Supreme Court—one filled with high profile developments concerning the right to abortion and the treatment of LGBT workers—was a single, ominous sentence buried away on page eleven of the Court’s 

Costs cumulate. Not only insofar as their separate consequences add up, but also in the sense that often the cumulative effect of independent actions is greater than their sum total might suggest.