Recently in Court News Category

Justice Stephen Breyer can't catch a break.

Thursday, The Washington Post's Reliable Source column reported that Justice Breyer was robbed earlier this month. A housekeeper discovered the break-in May 4. No one was home at the time of the burglary, according to Supreme Court spokeswoman Kathleen Arberg.

If this feels like déjà vu, it's because Justice Breyer was also robbed in February at his home on the West Indies island of Nevis. The machete-wielding robber took approximately $1,000 in cash from Breyer, his wife, Joanna, and their guests. Thankfully, no one was injured.

As we mentioned last week, the Supreme Court's popularity is waning. A recent Pew Research Center poll showed that only 52 percent of Americans have a favorable view of the Court, its lowest approval rating in a quarter-century.

So what’s an aging institution to do when it loses its sex appeal? Why, get a face lift, of course. This week, workers started a nearly two-year Supreme Court renovation project on the building’s marble facade.

As a legal community, we assume that a litigant's statements to the Supreme Court are true. The limited number of cases that reach the Court each year are subject to intense media scrutiny, so surely any falsities would be quickly revealed and horribly embarrassing.

Whether or not it was an outright lie, a rare piece of faulty information made its way to the Nine in the 2009 case, Nken v. Holder, and the Court based its opinion, in part, on that faulty information. Now, some immigrant groups are asking the Court to amend its opinion to correct the mistake.

The Supreme Court ruled last week in U.S. v. Home Concrete & Supply that three years was plenty of time for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to determine whether a taxpayer has overstated the basis in property that he has sold, and understated the gain received from the sale.

The case stemmed from an investigation in the Son of Boss tax shelters, which created paper losses to offset real gains. ("Boss" is an acronym for "bond and option sales strategies.")

Regardless of whether the country prefers "activist" judges or "strict constructionists," only half of Americans have a favorable opinion of the Supreme Court, according to a new Pew Research Center poll.

That number has steadily declined over the last three years. In April 2009, 64 percent of respondents had a favorable opinion of the Court; by July 2010, that number had dropped to 58 percent.

Citizens United is criticizing the Montana Supreme Court for its Western Tradition Partnership v. Attorney General ruling.

Last December, the popularly-elected Montana Supreme Court held in its 5-2 Western Tradition decision that the state had a compelling interest in continuing to enforce the state’s Corrupt Practices Act. Montana voters approved the Act, which limits/bans corporate campaign expenditures, in 1912.

At the time the decision came out, one of the dissenters remarked that the U.S. Supreme Court would strike down the opinion without a second thought because the ruling contradicts the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision.

The Supreme Court has been busy again this week, with two notable cert orders on Monday, three cases in oral argument, and four new decisions.

Tuesday, we told you about the Court's opinion in Filarsky v. Delia. Here's what you need to know about the week's other opinions.

There are two notable cases listed among Monday's Supreme Court orders: Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons and Skilling v. U.S.

Kirtsaeng is a grant, and Skilling is a denial. Let's take a minute to discuss what we will and won't be talking about during the October 2012 term.

A lot of people -- even non-lawyers -- are talking about Marbury v. Madison today. The case that established judicial review may not be as popular as Brown v. Board of Education or Roe v. Wade, but most Americans discussed it at least once during school.

The masses are talking, tweeting, and status-updating about Marbury because yesterday President Obama expressed faith that the Supreme Court will uphold the Affordable Care Act, saying "I'm confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress." Obama's bravado was greeted with criticism that the president -- a Harvard-educated lawyer and former constitutional law professor -- was overlooking the fact that judicial review hasn't been "unprecedented" since 1803, says The Wall Street Journal.

The Supreme Court wasn’t solely focused on the Affordable Care Act arguments this week, even if the rest of the country could speak of nothing else. The Court also released five opinions, including three that we didn’t cover on Wednesday because we, (like everyone else), could speak of nothing but Medicaid and severability.

In split decisions, the Court reversed the Ninth Circuit in FAA v. Cooper (quel surprise!), affirmed the Fifth Circuit in Setser v. U.S., and reversed the Second Circuit in Vartelas v. Holder. Here’s a quick recap of what you should know about the latest Supreme Court opinions: