Recently in Legal History Category

With January's arguments completed, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has embarked on a legal "listening" tour of Egypt and Tunisia, one year after the "Arab Spring" uprisings began.

The Supreme Court's elder jurist landed in Egypt on Friday, the start of a politically significant weekend there. Justice Ginsburg, 78, is traveling with her daughter, Columbia law professor Jane Ginsburg, according to the State Department.

Justice Ginsburg's visit to Egypt will be followed by a stop in Tunisia where the Arab Spring uprisings began, the State Department reports. Perhaps due to security concerns, just a few scant details about the associate justice's trip have been released:

Big Supreme Court of the U.S. (SCOTUS) news this week has included the announcement that retired  Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter is set to deliver the commencement address at Harvard, which also happens to be the Justice's undergraduate and law school alma mater.  Appointed in 1990 by President George H. Bush, Justice Souter proved to be a moderate liberal, even-keeled SCOTUS justice who notably dissented in Bush v. Gore and joined Supreme Court Justices Kennedy and O'Connor in a plurality position in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, upholding the tenets of Roe v. Wade.  He left his post on the High Court with a legacy of strong work ethic, quiet independence, and as a champion of individual rights.

And that officially takes retired Justice Souter out of the running as the Supreme Court's most insignificant justice, leaving 110 other candidates vying for the prize of most forgettable. 

Whether or not you watched, listened, or read President Obama's address to Congress this week, even the bubble of law school can't completely shield you from the current state of the Union.  In sum, the economy. It was what was for dinner at the 2010 annual address by the nation's Chief Executive.

Parsing out the address more carefully, there are a few quotes that may resonate with law students.  Here are 3 to know, and why they matter to you, aspiring J.D.

If we're going to write a post on interesting legal happenings on this date, we should probably start by noting a couple of birthdays.  Today in 1907 was the birthday of biologist/ Silent Spring author Rachel Carson, who brought us modern environmentalism and the EPA.  And this date in 1923 gave the world Henry Kissinger, who is, interestingly enough, not the only Nobel Peace Prize winner to also suffer allegations of being a war criminal.

Of course, since it's late May, the more interesting legal events of the day are inevitably going to be the Supreme Court opinions which inevitably rain down upon us at this time of year.  And sure enough, we have two classics to bring you back to the finer points of torts and con law:

1935: A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, a/k/a the Sick Chicken case: who remembers their con law and can quickly recite the facts and holding?  No one?  Fine, we'll give you the holding at least: the court struck down the National Industrial Recovery Act, a major piece of New Deal legislation, as, among other things, not within Congress's power to enact under the Commerce Clause.  Sound familiar?  You'll also recall that the court had a change of heart the very next year, and that Congress would subsequently spend the next 60 years blissfully expanding its Commerce Clause authority to regulate absolutely anything it wanted to.

You can read all about the legal aspects of Tuesday's big SCOTUS decision on "fleeting expletives" at FindLaw's CourtSide (lawyer-y take) and Law and Daily Life (consumer-friendly version, complete with quotes from Cher and Bono).  But Greedy Associates is more interested in Justice Antonin Scalia's out-of-left-field (and probably just plain wrong) take on whether rural or urban Americans do more cussin':

We doubt, to begin with, that small-town broadcasters run a heightened risk of liability for indecent utterances. In programming that they originate, their down-home local guests probably employ vulgarity less than big-city folks; and small-town stations generally cannot afford or cannot attract foul-mouthed glitteratae from Hollywood.

Leaving aside for a moment Scalia's quaint notion that small-town America somehow remains blissfully free of s-words and f-bombs: glitteratae?  Really?

Lawyers love their Latin.  From arguendo to nolo contendere, from pro se to in re to per curiam, you just can't get between the legal system and a good turn of Latin phrase.  It's perhaps the most visible way in which lawyers work to distinguish themselves from the non-lawyering public (classics majors not included; we distinguish ourselves from them by comparing paychecks).  Impress your friends, confound your pro se opponents: throw in an ab initio here, a res ipsa loquitor there, and remind everyone that you're an initiate, armed with the secret linguistic knowledge that will dominate the argument and win the case.

But glitteratae?