Today in Supreme Court History: January 8, 1973

1/8/1973: Trial begins for seven men accused of illegal entry into Democratic headquarters at Watergate hotel. The break-in would give rise to U.S. v. Nixon.

The Watergate Complex

 

 

Comments

[Dan Schiavetta]

The Paquete Habana, 175 U.S. 677 (decided January 8, 1900): fishing vessel was not a "prize of war" (its crew did not even know there was a war going on when it was seized in 1898 off the coast of Cuba) and therefore owner and crew awarded value of it and its contents (lots of fish in tanks); the opinion is a long, long historical survey of admirality jurisdiction and on prize law

Culbertson v. Berryhill, 139 S.Ct. 517 (decided January 8, 2019): construing 42 U.S.C. §406, Thomas holds that 25% cap on attorney's fees for successful pursuit of past due benefits applies only to proceedings before a court, not to the runup administrative proceedings

Los Angeles County Flood Control District v. Natural Resources Defense Council, 568 U.S. 78 (decided January 8, 2013): stormwater runoff into river is not a "pollutant" as defined by the Clean Water Act (even though opinion admits that stormwater is often heavily polluted)

Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers v. Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe R.R. Co., 516 U.S. 152 (decided January 8, 1996): I picked this case because of two interesting terms dealing with when a train crew's maximum 12 hours expire during a trip: "deadhead transportation" (getting the new crew to the train, often requiring a special stop, and the old crew back to the terminal) and "limbo time" (the time spent by the new crew and the old crew during d.t.). Here the Court, noting that the purpose of the Hours of Service Act is to prevent fatigue, holds that the time waiting for deadhead transportation to the train counts toward the 12-hour daily limit but waiting for d.t. away from the train (i.e., to the terminal) does not

Western Union Telegraph Co. v. Lenroot, 323 U.S. 490 (decided January 8, 1945): by-foot or by-car transmission of telegraph messages by children under age 16 is not interstate commerce and therefore federal child labor statute did not apply (Black, who as a Senator proposed a bill that would have included this activity, dissented, as one might expect)

[Michael P]

Obvious follow up question for the last: Is entirely intra-state cultivation of marijuana by someone under 16, for personal/non-commercial use, interstate commerce? If Angel Raich was young enough, would he have been allowed to grow his pot?

[Dan Schiavetta]

Interesting question! Thanks.

[Gandydancer]

"Is entirely intra-state cultivation of marijuana by someone under 16, for personal/non-commercial use, interstate commerce?"

I don't see why not. What does the cultivator's age have to do with it? Wickard v. Filburn may have been a shitty decision, but it's still "good law".

[Michael P]

Telegraph is/was even more clearly interstate commerce than the grains in Wickard v. Filburn or marijuana in Gonzales v. Raich, so it is incongruous that a particular last-mile means of delivering telegrams did not count as interstate commerce -- or as falling within a comprehensive regulatory regime that addresses the interstate market. But I think the incongruity is resolved because this 1945 case is really about statutory interpretation/construction rather than constitutional limits:

But had [Congress] determined to reach this employment, we do not think it would have done so by artifice in preference to plain terms. It is admitted that if [recte it] is beyond the judicial power of innovation to supply a direct prohibition by construction. We think we should not try to reach the same result by a series of interpretations so far-fetched and forced as to bring into question the candor of Congress as well as the integrity of the interpretative process.

An amusing, although scientifically errant, aside in the decision:

We do not think it is necessary for us to resolve the interesting but baffling inquiry as to precisely what, if anything, moves across state lines in the telegraphic process. In its practical aspects, which concern the public, transmission of messages is too well known to require analysis; and in its scientific aspects, which interest the physicist, it is too little known to permit of it.

[John F. Carr]

Dots come in. Dashes go out. Can't explain that.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Michael P,

Your point is true. But much of the discussion (and apparently the debate in Congress) is whether what these kids were doing was interstate commerce, which would bear upon Constitutional limits. I'll revise my summary. Thanks!

[Michael P]

I did not get that sense from the opinion — it seemed to me that much of the debate (and disagreement between the House and Senate) was over the extent to which Congress should regulate the child labor aspect of interstate commerce: yes for mining and factory work, no for acting, etc. I think the beginning of what I quoted implies that (the Court thought that) Congress could have regulated this child labor if it wished.

[Noscitur a sociis]

Angel Raich was young enough, would he have been allowed to grow his pot?

Angel Raich is a woman, and as noted in the opinion, was “unable to cultivate her own, and thus relies on two caregivers, litigating as ‘John Does,’ to provide her with locally grown marijuana at no charge.”

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

The hypothetical remains unchanged. That's what hypotheticals do: pose hypothetical questions, for education and enlightenment.

[Noscitur a sociis]

Obvious follow up question for the last: Is entirely intra-state cultivation of marijuana by someone under 16, for personal/non-commercial use, interstate commerce? If Angel Raich was young enough, would he have been allowed to grow his pot?

This is a fair tension in response to captcrisis’s summary, but the summary is incorrect. The issue in the case is that the relevant statute didn’t prohibit child labor in interstate commerce: it prohibited “ship[ping] or deliver[ing] for shipment in commerce any goods produced in an establishment situated in the United States in or about which within thirty days prior to the removal of such goods therefrom any oppressive child labor has been employed.” The court held that the telegram delivery didn’t fall within that definition. It didn’t hold that the telegraph workers weren’t engaged in interstate commerce, and indeed seemed to agree that they were.

[Syd Henderson]

I like the first one but am not tempted to read the decision.

[Dilan Esper]

The Paquete Habana is one of the most important cases in international human rights litigation, and gets cited over and over again in briefs in those cases (when I worked on those cases for the ACLU and in private practice, I probably cited it 200 times).

The reason is the case holds that CUSTOMARY international law- essentially the international equivalent of the common law in domestic jurisprudence- will be applied in United States courts:

"International law is part of our law, and must be ascertained and administered by the courts of justice of appropriate jurisdiction as often as questions of right depending upon it are duly presented for their determination. For this purpose, where there is no treaty and no controlling executive or legislative act or judicial decision, resort must be had to the customs and usages of civilized nations, and, as evidence of these, to the works of jurists and commentators who by years of labor, research, and experience have made themselves peculiarly well acquainted with the subjects of which they treat. Such works are resorted to by judicial tribunals not for the speculations of their authors concerning what the law ought to be, but for trustworthy evidence of what the law really is."

This is super-important in human rights cases, because a lot of the principles of international human rights law either never made it into treaties or got bottled up in ratification debates in various countries. For instance, long before Congress passed statutes banning torture and making it actionable, US courts were applying the customary international law definition of torture in cases.

It's also important in international law cases that don't involve human rights, such as admiralty cases and even international commercial disputes. Again, the basic notion is that if the nations of the world have "always done it this way", and Congress or the President hasn't disapproved of that approach, US courts can use that custom as the rule of decision in case.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Thanks! I didn’t know that.

I appreciate the commentary these daily case summaries engender, even when someone points out that I got a case wrong.

[Dr. Ed 2]

I never cease to be amazed at the INCOMPETENCE of CREEP.

[Frank Drackman]

"Incompetent"?? Tricky Milhouse re-rerected winning 49 States, even McGovern's Home State of SD, would say the Committee to Re-erect the President did just that. Incompetence was on the part of the White House trying to cover it up, "Oh, we can't admit we were spying on the DemoKKKrats, like they spied on us in 1960 and 1968 (and probably were in 1972)"
Oh yeah, maybe don't tape all of your incriminating conversations, pretty sure that was Milhouse and not CREEP.
I'm guessing we won't see a "Today in Surpreme Court History" on January 27 commemorating the signing of the Vietnam Cease Fire, OK, North Vietnam won in the end, but if LBJ had his way, we'd still be fighting there.

Frank "Nixon's the One (who ended JFK/LBJ/s war)

[not guilty]

Nixon did not end the war between North Vietnam and South Vietnam. The 1973 agreement ended direct American involvement on essentially the same terms as Nixon could have gotten in 1969. In the meantime, the conflict expanded into Cambodia and Laos.

[Frank Drackman]

Thanks, Oliver Stone/Einstein, "on essentially the same terms as Nixon could have gotten in 1969" Or LBJ could have gotten in 1969, 1968, 1967, 1966, 1965, 1964, so why didn't LBJ end it in 1965, you know, after he won a landslide Victory??
Jeez-us, don't peoples even half-assed research their replies? I feel like I'm Jap-Slapping a Mongoloid for Drooling on my quarter-pounder at Mickey D's. And just to pound you into the turf, (Throw the Flag, I don't give a shit)
And this is from a "The Atlantic" article on LBJ from July 1973
Johnson gave Nixon "high grades" in foreign policy, but worried intermittently that the President was being pressured into removing U.S. forces too quickly, before the South Vietnamese were really able to defend themselves. "If the South falls to the Communists, we can have a serious backlash here at home," he warned.

Not like things would have been better if LBJ (or even worse that gutless ward-healer Humpty Humphrey) had won in 6"

Frank

[Frank Drackman]

68", sorry, I rended my Garment,

[Mr. Bumble]

Then why did the Nobel committee awrd Kissinger the Peace Prize
Has it been rescinded?

[John F. Carr]

The Nobel Peace prize is often a head-scratcher.

[Mr. Bumble]

...as are many Pulitzers.

[Ben_]

That was back before Democrats decided that ballot fraud was way easier than running an election campaign.

[Frank Drackman]

Don't get it? they won will Ballot Fraud in 1960 (would have been better for JFK if they hadn't) tried in 68, almost pulled it off in 2000, tried in 2004, and remember the whole "Electors don't have to vote for who their state voted for" in the aftermath of the 2016 erection of Donaldus Maximus, yeah, for a week or two, there were stories about how peoples were trying to get Trump Erectors to not vote for him (Didn't work, actually more of Hillary Rodman's erectors defected)
Oh, and 0-20??? No fraud here folks, it's expected that Trumps 500,000 vote win in PA will vanish when the "Mail In" vote comes in, which coincidentally, was just enough for Senescent J to "win"

Frank

[SRG]

So the PA GOP said, let's count in-person ballots before mail-in ballots, so that way, when Trump has a lead and then the lead starts coming down later, it will look like voter fraud, and lo! Their intent was realised.

[Ben_]

They were always going to keep finding ballots to count until the result was what they wanted.

[SRG]

Well, the Trump-appointed Federal judges disagreed with you over PA voting. They didn't find anything amiss.

[David Nieporent]

Hell, Trump's own lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, disagrees with Ben. He expressly said "We are not alleging fraud."

[Zirinets 2]

Thanks for sharing these awesome blog posts. We write economic papers, graduate papers, at any academic level.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Western Union Telegraph Co. v. Lenroot, 323 U.S. 490 (decided January 8, 1945): by-foot or by-car transmission of telegraph messages by children under age 16 was not specifically prohibited by federal child labor statute (we learn here that 12% of all message runners were under the age of 16)