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You’ve reached the Supreme Court. Press 1 for live arguments
Legal Business |
2020/05/02 13:07
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This is how the Supreme Court embraces technology. Slowly. It took a worldwide pandemic for the court to agree to hear arguments over the telephone, with audio available live for the first time. C-SPAN plans to carry the arguments.
Just two years ago case filings were made available online, decades after other courts. Other forays into technology, including posting opinions online, have not always gone smoothly.
Chief Justice John Roberts acknowledged in 2014 that courts will always be cautious when it comes to embracing the “next big thing” in technology.
And even the decision to hold arguments via telephone is “sort of retro,” given much of the country and other courts are doing meetings and arguments using video conferencing, said Clare Cushman, the director of publications at the Supreme Court Historical Society.
But the decision remains a “giant leap forward,” Cushman said, for a court that has shunned technology in favor of tradition. The court used an obsolete document delivery system, pneumatic tubes, until 1971. It was slow to add computers and late in transitioning from printing opinions in the court’s basement on Linotype machines, which used metal type, to electronic printing in the early 1980s. |
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Ginsburg, from hospital, joins in on 'Obamacare' arguments
Legal Business |
2020/05/01 13:06
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The Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday in a dispute involving Trump administration rules that would allow more employers who cite a religious or moral objection to opt out of providing no-cost birth control to women.
With arguments conducted by telephone because of the coronavirus pandemic, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg joined in from the Maryland hospital where she was being treated for an infection caused by a gallstone. The court said she expected to be in the hospital for a day or two.
Justice Clarence Thomas kept up his streak of asking questions, a rarity for him, during the third day of phone arguments, with live audio available to the public.
The case stems from the Obama-era health law, under which most employers must cover birth control as a preventive service, at no charge to women in their insurance plans.
Under the Affordable Care Act, the Obama administration exempted houses of worship, such as churches, synagogues and mosques, from the requirement. It created a way by which religiously affiliated organizations including hospitals, universities and charities could opt out of paying for contraception, but women on their health plans would still get no-cost birth control. Some groups complained the opt-out process violated their religious beliefs.
Trump administration officials in 2017 announced a rule change that allows many companies and organization with religious or moral objections to opt out of covering birth control without providing an alternate avenue for coverage. The rules were finalized in 2018. The government has estimated that the change would impact approximately 70,500 women who would lose contraception coverage in one year as a result.
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Court tosses NY case that could have expanded gun rights
Headline Court News |
2020/04/14 13:07
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The Supreme Court sidestepped a major decision on gun rights Monday in a dispute over New York City’s former ban on transporting guns.
The justices threw out a challenge from gun rights groups, including the National Rifle Association’s New York affiliate. The court ruled that the city’s move to ease restrictions on taking licensed, locked and unloaded guns outside the city limits, coupled with a change in state law to prevent New York from reviving the ban, left the court with nothing to decide. The court asked a lower court to consider whether the city’s new rules still pose problems for gun owners.
The anticlimactic end to the Supreme Court case is a disappointment to gun rights advocates and relief to gun control groups who thought a conservative Supreme Court majority fortified by two appointees of President Donald Trump, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, might use the case to expand on landmark decisions from a decade ago that established a right under the Second Amendment to keep a gun at home for self-defense.
But other guns cases remain in the high court’s pipeline, including whether gun owners have a constitutional right to carry their weapons in public. Later Monday, the justices scheduled 10 cases involving gun restrictions in California, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts and New Jersey, for possible discussion during their private telephone conference on Friday. The court could decide to hear one or more of those next term.
Although the opinion was unsigned, the court split 6-3 over the outcome. Gorsuch joined Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas in dissenting from the dismissal. Kavanaugh wrote a brief concurring opinion in which he agreed with the result, but also said the court should take up another guns case soon. |
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A Supreme Court Justice Visits Campus: A Look Behind The Scenes
Legal Business |
2020/03/24 13:09
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A recently compiled report shows that Supreme Court justices get neither big bucks nor valuable gifts when they speak at public universities. But public and press access granted by the justices is idiosyncratic.
Two justices ? Neil Gorsuch and Samuel Alito ? have limited access to their appearances, even on occasion forbidding recording of their speeches for archival purposes.
The report by the non-partisan organization Fix the Court praised all the justices for going out of their way to speak at state universities, and not just the elite private schools that they and their law clerks have attended. The report found that roughly one-third of all the colleges and universities visited by the justices were public institutions.
Fix the Court found some slip-ups on disclosure of reimbursed travel expenses ? none of them major ? by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Clarence Thomas. When Fix the Court pointed out the omissions, both justices said, through the court press office, that they would amend their disclosure forms.
For the most part, the travel and lodging expenses are routine. The justices travel commercial. Occasionally, a university owns a private plane that it sends to transport a justice to a place that is not easily accessible from Washington, D.C. But these flights are rare. Justice Alito even declined one such offer.
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