Acting swiftly to try to get a Supreme Court decision by next summer, the Obama administration on Friday filed the opening papers in United States v. Texas — the epic battle over who controls U.S. immigration policy. The appeal was filed just eleven days after a federal appeals court had blocked enforcement of the policy, which… Read More
Oct 19 2015
Prompt appeal of House health care challenge blocked
A federal trial judge in Washington, D.C., refused on Monday to allow the Obama administration to pursue an immediate appeal testing the House of Representatives’ right to sue in a dispute over federal spending under the new health care law.
Oct 7 2015
Pondering an issue that’s not at stake — or is it?
The Supreme Court took about two hours on Wednesday to hear six lawyers (one of them twice), but at the end it appeared that an issue the Justices had declined to take up may have to be. Thus arose a question that maybe only a law professor — or an appellate lawyer — could love. Can… Read More
Oct 2 2015
Is Puerto Rico just a colony under Congress’s control?
A version of this post appeared Friday on Constitution Daily, the blog of the National Constitution Center, Philadelphia. ——————- From the time the Constitution was written, Congress has had clear authority to “make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States.” That is what Article IV says… Read More
Aug 17 2015
Unionizing of college football players stalls
The attempt by college football players at Northwestern University to set up a labor union to bargain for health and other protection stalled at the National Labor Relations Board on Monday, as the five-member panel decided unanimously against taking up the legal claim. By not settling the issue, however, the board stressed that it was… Read More
Aug 14 2015
Immigration policy withstands new appeal
President Obama’s sweeping change in immigration policy, designed to allow more than four million non-citizens who entered the U.S. illegally to remain in the country, on Friday withstood a new challenge before a federal appeals court — but only for a technical reason. Two opinions issued in the new case, however, contained starkly differing reactions to… Read More
Aug 11 2015
Making same-sex marriage a reality: The final steps
Demonstrating that the Supreme Court may rule but may not always command, the process of making same-sex marriage available nationwide is still unfolding, some six weeks after the Justices decided in its favor. Political resistance is developing in many places, but the legal process is moving ahead — state by state — to make same-sex… Read More
Aug 7 2015
Individual insurance mandate survives again
A new challenge to the federal mandate that most Americans must obtain health insurance or pay a penalty stirred up a major constitutional debate in a federal appeals court on Friday. However, in the end, all eleven judges — relying on sharply conflicting views — rejected the challenge.
Aug 6 2015
Texas voter ID law ruled invalid — in part
Acting one day before the fiftieth anniversary of the nation’s most important voting rights law, a federal appeals court on Wednesday ruled that Texas will be barred from enforcing at least part of its four-year-old law that requires a photo ID before a voter can go to the polls. The ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals… Read More
Jul 7 2015
Ban on contractors’ political donations upheld
Finding that the problem of corruption in government contracting is still a major civic scandal, a unanimous federal appeals court on Tuesday rejected a new constitutional challenge to the seventy-five-year-old ban on political contributions by individuals who are hired under contract to do work for federal agencies — an increasing way that federal agency tasks… Read More
