The Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments this morning on two cases involving jurisdictional issues.

First up is Kucana v. Holder, a case involving questions over the jurisdiction-stripping provision of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act.  The Act removed courts' jurisdiction to review a "decision or action of the Attorney General . . . the authority for which is specified under this subchapter to be in the discretion of" the Attorney General.

In a new per curiam opinion issued by the U.S. Supreme Court today, the Justices held that a convicted Ohio killer's "attorneys met the constitutional minimum of competence," reversing a 2008 federal appeals court ruling that his attorneys failed to find certain mitigating factors in his defense in violation of the Sixth Amendment.

How convinced was the Supreme Court of its decision? The justices concluded that:

[t]his is not a case in which the defendant's attorneys failed to act while potentially powerful mitigating evidence stared them in the face,

The Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments in three cases today, two of which deal with juveniles who were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for non-homicide offenses.  The other case involves limits that the Federal Circuit has imposed on patents for certain types of business methods.

The Supreme Court is hearing arguments on two cases related to criminal prosecutions today.  The first, Pottawattamie County v. McGhee, examines whether prosecutors are subject to a civil trial and potential damages for wrongful conviction and incarceration when the criminal defendant alleges that the prosecutor encouraged a witness to lie during the criminal investigation and then presented that testimony during the criminal trial.

The Court's other argument today, Wood v. Allen, deals with several questions that have arisen during a capital punishment case.  Most of the questions concern the ways that the courts and attorneys handled the defendant's mental impairments, but there's also a Batson jury/evidence question thrown in for good measure.

The Supreme Court has another day of oral arguments today, and the star case is Hemi Group v. City of New York, a case examining whether state and local governments have standing under RICO to pursue noncommercial losses, such as unpaid taxes.  Governments around the country will be watching this one with keen interest.

Also on the Court's agenda are a case involving challenges to electricity rates, and a bankruptcy case.  Not the most, um, electrifying topics, but, as with all things Supreme, still important.

Today the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal of James Ford Seale, the ex-Ku Klu Klan member, former Mississippi policeman and sheriff's deputy who was indicted and convicted for his role in the kidnappings and brutal murders of Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore in the summer of 1964.

According to a report in the Jackson Free Press, "the FBI investigation of the Dee-Moore case yielded more than 1,000 pages of files, including informant accounts." In November 1964, then FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, wrote to President Lyndon B. Johnson's Special Assistant Bill Moyers, that Seale and fellow Klansman Charles Marcus Edwards ""willfully, unlawfully, feloniously and with malice aforethought [for] killing" Dee and Moore.

Seale was never charged until more than forty years later. 

It's not all hard work at the Supreme Court these days, apparently. 

While the Court is currently wrapping up the first month of the 2009 October Term, some of the justices have snuck out of the dreary confines of One First Street and gone out on the town(s) for a taste of the nightlife.

The Supreme Court's Establishment Clause jurisprudence is, quite simply, a confusing mess when it comes to religious monuments on public land.  So much so that two different cases involving displays of the Ten Commandments heard on the same day can end up with different results. 

For these types of cases, the Court has typically engaged in an ad hoc, fact-based examination of the situations surrounding the monuments in order to determine whether they violated the Constitution's prohibition on advancement of a single religion by the government. 

That being so, the Court should have fun with Salazar v. Buono, oral arguments for which occurred this morning.  The facts surrounding this case are convoluted as well as novel.  The dispute concerns a cross erected without authorization on federal land by the Veteran of Foreign Wars over 70 years ago to commemorate fallen US soldiers.  The cross, which sits in the massive, 1.6 million acre Mojave National Preserve, has been the site of Easter sunrise services since it was first built. 

Ah, the leaves are turning, baseball is heading into the postseason, and the weather is becoming noticeably cooler - which means it must be time for the Supreme Court to begin its October Term for 2009.

And begin it did, although not exactly the way it was supposed to.

C-SPAN has taped a documentary on the Supreme Court that shows some of the justices' private sides. 

For instance: Sonia Sotomayor, like so many Americans, doesn't want to sell her primary residence right now because the real estate market's still down a well. 

In an interview with the network, Sotomayor admits that concerns over the state of the market have prevented her from selling her Greenwich Village condo, even though she's currently shopping around for a new pad in D.C.