Tag Archives: Immigration

Supreme Court Midterm Report

By tmess2 | Published January 26, 2016

When people think about key dates in the Supreme Court calendar, the day that most comes to mind is the First Monday in October (the official start of the annual term) — probably because it is the only date that is set in stone.  The first argument day of each term is always the first Monday in October.  There are other key points in the term, but they float a bit.  One of those floating dates is the Monday after the last January argument.  That date (which was earlier this week) is key because of the effective time table created by the Supreme Court’s rules.   Under those rules, barring emergencies required rushed briefing and argument (United States vs. Nixon, Bush vs. Gore), the soonest that a case can be argued is approximately three months after the Supreme Court decides to grant full argument on a case.  Because the last argument session is always in late April/Early May, any case accepted for argument after January will not be heard before the next term begins in October.  That makes this point of the year the first time that it is possible to say with absolute certainty what cases will be heard and decided by June.  With this being an election year, the politically explosive cases on the Supreme Court’s argument calendars are even more explosive.

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Equal Representation and the Supreme Court

By tmess2 | Published December 20, 2015

Earlier this month, the United States Supreme Court heard arguments in Evanwel vs. Abbott.  The issue in this case is how to measure population for the purposes of determining if districts have roughly equal population.  The challengers are asserting that population should be based on voters rather than the total population.  The State of Texas is claiming that each state gets to choose the appropriate measure of population.  This case involves both theoretical discussion of the nature of representation as well as very serious political impact.  The decision could vastly alter the politics of the U.S.

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Immigration and Marriage

By tmess2 | Published June 20, 2015

In politics, leaked information is rather common.  It always seems that a potential proposal or policy change hits the news while it is still under consideration.  The judiciary, and particularly the Supreme Court, has been mostly immune from this practice.  The lack of solid information on what the Supreme Court has decided in any particular case before the official release of the decision leads those who follow the Supreme Court to try to read omens and clues from a variety of sources — the questions asked at oral argument, which justices have issued opinions from a particular two-week argument session, and sometimes what the justices have said in another opinion.

As we near the end of the active part of this year’s Supreme Court term, this past week saw a flood of opinions (nine opinions) leaving eleven cases to be issued presumably between Monday and July 1.  (At the present time, the Supreme Court will almost certainly be handing down some opinions on Monday, June 22.  It is unlikely that they will hand down eleven opinions on Monday.  The Supreme Court has not yet announced any other days for the next seven days.  Jf the Supreme Court is going to hand down all opinions this week, there will probably be one or two more days.  If not, we will see at least some opinions on June 29, and maybe even on June 30 or July 1.)  There were a couple of interesting Free Speech cases that I will probably post something on during the down time of July, but the big four cases of the second half of the term remain for this last push (fair housing, redistricting, health insurance subsidies, and same-sex marriage).  The big surprise this week, however came in an unexpected case, Kerry v. Din.  When this case came to the Supreme Court, it looked like a case about immigration law and the virtually unreviewable discretion of embassy staff to reject a visa request.  However, this case arose in the context of the spouse of a U.S. citizen and court watchers are now wondering what the discussion of marital rights in this case might hint about the same-sex marriage cases.

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