Recent Court News Decisions

In December, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals held in a 2-1 decision that an Illinois ban on carrying a weapon in public is unconstitutional.

In striking the law, Judge Richard Posner said that Illinois had to provide the court with more than merely a rational basis for asserting that its sweeping ban was justified by an increase in public safety. The court, however, stayed its ruling for 180 days to allow the Illinois legislature to craft a new gun law.

The decision was controversial, particularly after the Sandy Hook school shooting that happened only three days later, but controversy isn't enough to guarantee en banc rehearing. Last week, the Seventh Circuit declined to reconsider its decision.

Maybe you have seen Exit Through the Gift Shop, a delightful documentary about a French guy trying to make a documentary about the street art movement. There are several scenes in which police officers try to thwart the artists/hooligans' attempts to leave their marks on buildings. The aforementioned French guy caught the interactions on tape.

Cop-recording can be controversial. Most police officers don't want bystanders to tape them while they're working, and some cops will intimidate or arrest people who try to film them with their cellphones. Citizens who try to record the police -- like the Frenchman in the film -- are often told to shut off their cameras.

The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals is heading back to law school.

Appellate judges occasionally like to descend from their lofty lairs to mingle with commoners and law students. In that spirit, a three-judge panel will hear oral arguments at Notre Dame Law School on October 1. The appellate court will consider three cases in this special session:

When the Chicago Teachers Union strike started Monday, teachers no longer had to worry about getting arrested for lingering in areas where "disorderly conduct" was occurring.

That’s because the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals had just enjoined a Chicago ordinance which criminalized a person's refusal to leave a scene of disorderly conduct when asked by a police officer.

George Ryan has to serve the rest of his prison term, according to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.

The Chicago-based court denied the former Illinois governor's appeal seeking release from prison on Monday, reports The Associated Press.

Few judges can hand down a benchslap with the same panache as our current law crush, Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals Chief Judge Frank Easterbrook.

This week, Judge Easterbrook told District Judge Michael J. Reagan that he was three kinds of wrong for refusing to screen an Illinois prisoner Anthony Wheeler’s complaint alleging that prison officials had failed to provide effective medical care for his “golf-ball-size hemorrhoids,” leaving him in excruciating pain. (According to Judge Easterbrook, “Documents submitted with the complaint show that Wheeler is not fantasizing.” Yikes.)

Connecting the Great Lakes and Mississippi watersheds through the Chicago Area Waterway System (CAWS) has been a boon to industry and commerce, and it supports transportation and recreation. But opening a pathway between bodies of fresh water has a price.

Within CAWS, the price is an invasive species of Asian carp.

Five states — Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Minnesota and Pennsylvania — sued the Army Corps of Engineers (the Corps) and the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago (the District) in federal court, seeking a preliminary injunction that would require the defendants to put in place additional physical barriers throughout the CAWS, implement new procedures to stop invasive carp, and expedite a study of how best to separate the Mississippi and Great Lakes watersheds permanently.

The Supreme Court will decide whether corporations can be held liable under the Alien Tort Act (ATA). The Court granted cert in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum on Monday.

The question now is whether the Court will agree with the Seventh, Eleventh, and D.C. Circuits that the ATA applies to corporations, or if it will affirm the Second Circuit on Kiobel, the lone opinion that denied liability.

The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments last week in a freedom of information case involving a University of Illinois policy which afforded greater weight to admissions applications from well-connected students.

In case you haven't heard, the University of Illinois has been in a bit of a pickle over the last two years for unsound admissions practices. Now, the University wants the Seventh Circuit to protect it from releasing records that would reveal the extent of the scandal.

The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin will host a joint memorial ceremony for Circuit Judge Terence Evans on Friday September 23, 2011, at 4 p.m. in the Ceremonial Courtroom of the Milwaukee Federal Courthouse.

The service is open to the public.

Judge Evans died from idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and acute respiratory distress syndrome in August at the University of Chicago Medical Center. He was 71.