AP American Government

Do "Damages" Include Emotional Distress?

Here's an interesting article about a case the Supreme Court heard on Wednesday involving an airline pilot whose H.I.V. status was disclosed in violation of a federal law that protects private information.  A key question before the court was whether the pilot could sue because of the emotional distress he had suffered from the disclosure, even though he had not suffered any monetary damages.  

More Items to Read about the Courts

In the previous four or five posts, I provided links to news articles I want you to read about the workings of the courts in the American system.  Here are a few more:

 

A federal district court judge in New York has rejected a proposed settlement between Citigroup and the federal Securities and Exchange Commission.  This is an interesting case where a federal judge is trying to tread "the line between the deference that judges are supposed to show to regulatory agencies while also ensuring that the court does not simply rubber-stamp decisions."  Read about it here. 

 

There is a lot of interest in having oral arguments before the Supreme Court televised as a way of educating the public about important issues (such as the constitutionality of the Obama health care law) and showing the thoughtful workings of America's highest court.  But the idea of televising Supreme Court proceedings has been raised many times before and arouses considerable opposition, including from some of the justices themselves.  Read about it here.

 

On Monday the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case involving telemarketing abuses.  The interesting question involved had to do with the appropriate jurisdiction of such cases.  Read about it here.  

 

Questions are being raised about the political leanings of two justices of the U.S. Supreme Court -- Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Elena Kagan -- and whether their political views should disqualify them from being allowed to participate in the upcoming Supreme Court case about the constitutionality of the Obama health-care law. Some liberals believe that Justice Thomas's impartiality is compromised by the intense political involvement of his wife, Virginia Thomas, in conservative causes.  Some conservatives believe that Justice Kagan should recuse herself from the case because of possible conflicts of interest stemming from involvement she may have had through her previous position (U.S. Solicitor General) in litigation involving health care.  Read about it here.  UPDATE:  See this New York Times editorial on the Supreme Court's "recusal problem."

Sotomayor Speaks Candidly

Here is an interesting article based on some comments that Justice Sonia Sotomayor made to an audience at Northwestern University.  As you can see, Justice Sotomayor criticizes the Senate confirmation process, dishes about the burden of making decisions of great consequence, and notes the great importance that oral arguments before the Court play in shaping the justices' final decisions.

Ruling in First-Amendment Case

 

Yesterday, the Supreme Court issued "the latest in a series of muscular First Amendment rulings from the Roberts court," this time protecting hateful speech at military funerals.  See this front-page article by Adam Liptak in today's New York Times. 

See here for the Wall Street Journal's report on the decision. 

Supreme Court Heads Back to Work

The Supreme Court of the United States starts its new term officially on Monday, October 2nd, but it actually begins tomorrow, when the justices meet to sift through more than 2,000 appeal petitions.

This article from Sunday's Boston Globe describes some of the cases we already know the Court will be dealing with this term.

Greehouse Reflects on the Court

Perhaps the best item in this morning's New York Times was Linda Greenhouse's article in the "Week in Review" section.  For nearly thirty years, Greenhouse has reported on the Supreme Court for the Times.  She's retiring to go teach at Yale Law School and offers these thoughts as a brief overview of the Court she has watched for a long time.

This is a good article about the Supreme Court -- about continuity and change on the Court, about how the Court facilitates change in society and thwarts it.  Well worth reading.

The Court Strikes Down "Millionaire's Amendment"

The media attention to the Supreme Court's controversial ruling in the gun-rights case yesterday completely overshadowed another decision the Court issued yesterday, striking down a law that aided the campaign rivals of rich candidates for Congress.  The so-called "millionaire's amendment" was a provision in federal campaign-financing law that was meant to level the playing field by compensating candidates whose opponents are wealthy enough to finance their own campaigns. (You can read all about it here.)  The Court's opinion in the case confirms (as the referenced article notes) the Court's "continuing skepticism about the constitutionality of campaign finance regulations."

Regulating the financing of political campaigns has been a notoriously difficult and controversial problem in American politics, as we'll see in class.

A Further Look at the Gun Decision

Just a few more comments about yesterday's Supreme Court decision on the right of individuals to own guns:

• The Court's ruling is actually fairly narrow and will have little practical impact in most of the country since the decision still allows most state and city gun restrictions, including licensing laws, limits on the commercial sale of guns, restrictions on guns in places like schools and government buildings. The decision's immediate applicability is to the District of Columbia, which had the strictest gun-control law in the country, an absolute ban on handguns.


• The Court's ruling in the case seems certain (as noted at the end of yesterday's post on the subject) to usher in a new round of litigation (law suits) over gun rights throughout the country as litigants try to flesh out precisely what regulations are to be permitted and which ones are not.  [On this point, see Adam Liptak's analysis of the decision in today's New York Times.]  For example, future cases will probably contest restrictions that include background checks, curbs on gun ownership by minors, a ban on automatic weapons (machine guns), limits on bulk purchases of guns, mandatory waiting periods (to prevent crimes of passion).  So, the political and legal battles will continue for years -- just as the fights over abortion rights (must parents be notified?  must the father give his permission?  can age limits be put on the right? can pregnant women be required to get counseling? can abortion clinics advertise? can waiting periods be required? can abortions be obtained through federally funded programs?) have continued long after the 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade.


• The fact that this decision was reached by a 5-to-4 vote of the Justices means that the Supreme Court will become a much more prominent issue in the presidential election, as noted here last week.  The future disposition of the Court hinges on the outcome of the election, as the next president "will almost certainly will get the opportunity to dramatically shift -- or solidify -- the judicial balance of power for decades to come." [See this article in today's Boston Globe for an explanation.]


• Finally, the Court's ruling in the gun case has yet another potential political implication, possibly affecting the presidential election in another way:  that is, the Supreme Court's decision may work to Obama's advantage because it partially takes the gun issue off the table and thus takes some of the pro-McCain fizz out of single-issue, pro-gun voters who might have gone to the polls in November to vote Republican in order to secure the rights now secured by this decision.  But that is mere speculation.  After all, as noted above, it's not as if the gun issue now disappears.

What's interesting about all this is to see the multiple ways in which a decision by the Supreme Court has implications and ramifications throughout the political system.

Supreme Court Rules on Guns

The Supreme Court this morning handed down the most important decision of the term — a decision affirming the Second Amendment right of an individual to have a gun in one's home.  See here.

There'll be a lot of commentary and analysis about this over the next few days. I hope you'll keep up with it on the news and through whatever sources of opinion you like.  I'll be trying to digest some of it for you here.

For now, however, what's important about this decision is that it has been made at all.  The Second Amendment contains easily the most ambiguously worded provision in the entire Bill of Rights: "[a] well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."   Most historians and judicial scholars who have read the congressional debates about this amendment agree that Congress meant to secure the right of local militias to bear arms. (As you recall, these militias were composed of local, private citizens who organized against Britain and later were occasionally called into action during local emergencies.)

The Court has long read the amendment as guaranteeing this right of citizens only in their capacity as soldiers in their state militias.  But many resourceful interest groups, such as the National Rifle Association, have vigorously advanced the belief that the amendment guarantees a personal right to own a gun.  Amazingly enough, this opinion has never really been tested in actual Supreme Court decisions.  Until now.

Last December, Cass Sunstein, a law professor at the University of Chicago (who just recently moved from there to Harvard) wrote an opinion piece for the Boston Globe about the case pending before the Court which resulted in today's decision.  It's worth reading in its entirety.  But note his prediction in the last two paragraphs:

This spring, the Supreme Court will probably issue its first major ruling on the Second Amendment. Here's a prediction: Dominated as it is by Republican appointees, the court will adopt the individual-rights interpretation. It will accept a controversial reading of the amendment's original meaning. It will run roughshod over long-settled understandings among the federal courts.

At the same time, the court will recognize that reasonable restrictions are permissible — and thus will energize, rather than end, the national discussion about the regulation of guns.

 Yes, in the same way that the 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade energized, rather than ended, the national discussion about abortion.

Primer on the Supreme Court

Next week, the Supreme Court will hand down several major decisions.  The newspapers will be full of lengthy articles and opinion pieces.  Television pundits will be fulminating.  All this will be happening because the Supreme Court matters.  Its decisions are important.  And the composition of the Supreme Court -- who holds the nine seats on the Court -- matters. Thus, it's one of many ways in which presidential elections matter: Whoever wins this election will likely have the opportunity to fill at least one seat on the Court and thus affect its ideological and jurisprudential leanings.

See this interesting, brief primer or "users' guide" to the Supreme Court by Dahlia Lithwick, a senior editor at Slate.  Here's a taste of what you'll get:

This week, the Supreme Court will hand down its final opinions for the 2007-08 term, and some of you will be really angry about guns, and some of you will be angry about Guantanamo. But then the justices will take off for Europe (or New Hampshire) and you will take off for the pool (or New Hampshire), and then I fear nobody will think much about the court again until next June.

The composition of the high court is one of the most important issues at stake in the November election. While the justices cannot bring down gas prices or bring home the troops, their decisions in the coming years will affect just about everything else: your rights regarding privacy, reproduction, speech and religion; how to count your vote and where your kids go to school; as well as your occupational and environmental protections. You name it, they'll decide it. Or they'll decide not to decide it (which may be even worse).

It's easy to convince yourself that who sits on that bench is irrelevant to you because the cases are too complicated to comprehend or too remote to affect your life. But the next president may have the chance to appoint as many as three justices—the constitutional equivalent of a royal flush. Herein, a user's guide to the Supreme Court for you to print out and take to the voting booth (or read at the pool).