The nation’s major cigarette manufacturers do not have to admit in their own public messaging, such as ads and packaging, that they have deceived the public in the past about the hazards of smoking, but they do have to say that they designed their products to make them more addictive, a federal appeals court ruled on Friday.
Same-sex marriage for Alabama — but not yet
A federal judge in Mobile ruled on Thursday that same-sex marriage must be available throughout Alabama, for any gay or lesbian couple wishing to apply for a license — but not yet.
Notre Dame birth-control protest denied again
Reacting to a Supreme Court order to reconsider, a federal appeals court refused on Tuesday for a second time to stop enforcement of the federal government’s birth-control mandate against Notre Dame University. In a two-to-one ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit cleared the way for a trial of the university’s challenge… Read More
No new limit on police use of force
This post also appears on scotusblog.com Amid an emotional national debate over claims that police are too quick to use excessive force, the Supreme Court ruled on Monday that officers have some leeway to fire their guns to subdue a mentally disturbed person who is violently threatening them. The Court did so in a narrow ruling… Read More
NSA’s telephone data sweeps ruled illegal
A federal appeals court, in a decision that may be mostly symbolic, ruled on Thursday that the National Security Agency does not have the authority to carry on its massive electronic sweeping-up of telephone data — authority that has been used for at least nine years but that is now due to expire at the start of… Read More
Compensation for wartime wrongs?
Retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, borrowing an idea from the belated government effort to make up for holding loyal Japanese-Americans in prison camps during World War II, on Monday proposed a similar approach to wrongs committed by government officials in carrying out the “war on terrorism.”
Same-sex marriage: The decisive questions
This post also appears on scotusblog.com Twenty-two months ago, the Supreme Court — perhaps not fully realizing that it was doing so — set off a constitutional revolution. In a decision that spoke somewhat tentatively about an “evolving understanding of the meaning of equality,” the Court in United States v. Windsor saw in that understanding… Read More
Preview on same-sex marriage — Part II, The states’ views
This post also appears on scotusblog.com This is the second post in a four-part series on the written arguments that have been filed in the same-sex marriage cases at the Supreme Court. This post covers the briefs of the four states in defense of their state bans. America’s state governments have never seen anything like… Read More
Preview on same-sex marriage — Part I, The couples’ views
This post also appears on scotusblog.com This is the first post in a four-part series on the written arguments that have been filed in the same-sex marriage cases at the Supreme Court. This post covers the briefs of the couples who are challenging the state bans. Later posts in this series will cover the state governments’… Read More
Federal judge threatens to end new immigration policy
NOTE TO READERS: The following post catches up with developments while the writer was necessarily away from work this week. The federal judge in Texas who is handling the claim of 26 states that the Obama administraiton’s new deferred-deportation policy is illegal threatened this week to strike down that policy altogether, even without holding a full trial.