Today in Supreme Court History: December 19, 1940

12/19/1940: U.S. v. Darby argued.

 

Comments

[Defenderz]

A stepping stone to Wickard, and what set America on its path to national suicide.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Sorrel's v. United States, 287 U.S. 435 (decided December 19, 1932): defendant accused of liquor sale (during Prohibition) can assert entrapment defense (agent who served in same division during World War I visited with some mutual friends and drew him into a long chat about their wartime experiences, casually asked for liquor, and after third request defendant left and returned twenty minutes later with a bottle and agent paid him $5 — aha!! you’re under arrest!)

Hunt v. Springfield Fire & Marine Ins. Co., 196 U.S. 47 (decided December 19, 1904): claim on insurance policy (for loss of household furniture) properly denied because furniture subject to “deed of trust” which is the same as a “chattel mortgage” and therefore excluded under policy language (this is an example of the “federal common law” the Court used to render before Erie R.R. v. Tompkins; state supreme courts were only too happy to go along as the Court decided issues of state law for them)

Reina v. United States, 364 U.S. 507 (decided December 19, 1960): affirming contempt order; witness had refused to testify after having been granted immunity under federal narcotics law statute but claimed Fifth Amendment privilege citing danger of state prosecution; Court holds that immunity also extends to state proceedings and does not encroach on state police powers in violation of Tenth Amendment (Court notes that statute, 18 U.S.C. §1406, had language similar to other federal immunity statutes, so I suppose this holding is broadly applicable)

[Dr. Ed 2]

$5 in 1932 is $107 today...

[Krayt]

It was only $89 two years ago!

[Dr. Ed 2]

Let's Go, Brandon....

[bernard11]

Inflation falling, real GDP per capita growing, labor force participation growing, etc.

[bernard11]

Inflation over the past two years is about 10.5%.

So $107 today would have been $96.80 two years ago.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

That Prohibition agent sounds like a real peach.

[Dan Schiavetta]

I was surprised when I read this case. It sounded like the kind of thing that undercover police did all the time with my generation as to marijuana and cocaine and they always got away with it. A couple of friends of mine went to jail that way.

[Commenter_XY]

Is Reina still good law (not set aside by a later SCOTUS)?

[Dilan Esper]

I wonder if Will Baude would cavil with your description of Hunt as involving federal common law.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Perhaps one could say more exactly that it was the federal courts deciding state common law. (Though they also were in the business of construing state positive law.)

Baude's article (I assume that's what you're talking about) discusses whether common law or positive law should guide construction of the Fourth Amendment. But one can't get away from his opening point, that any positive law is governed by the common understanding (often set forth in common law) of what the words mean. It could be hardly otherwise as to our initial set of laws, the Constitution -- the words in it didn't come out of nowhere, the delegates all knew the meaning of the words as they had been used and construed in the common law for hundreds of years, and the words were chosen carefully, often modified during debate, so as to ensure ratification.

[Dilan Esper]

FWIW I agree with you.

[Syd Henderson]

""Sorrel's": several friends and a 'friend'.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Yes.

It should be “Sorrells”. It got changed somehow and the edit function is apparently on vacation.

[apedad]

O/T

Appeals court rejects Meadows bid to move Georgia election case to federal court

An appeals court panel denied former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows’s bid to move his Georgia 2020 election racketeering criminal charges to federal court on Monday, rejecting a strategy that could’ve led to the charges being tossed and provided him with other advantages.

In a swift ruling issued just three days after oral arguments, the three-judge panel ruled that former federal officials — as opposed to current ones — are ineligible to move their charges.

Arguing he was acting in his capacity as chief of staff, Meadows contended that federal law enabled him to move his case out of state court.

But even if the law governing such transfers, a process known as removal, did extend to former officials, Meadows cannot leverage the statute because he did not establish he was acting in his official role, the judges ruled.

https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4366260-appeals-court-rejects-meadows-georgia-election-charges-federal-court/

One odd, side note in the decision:

"Although all three judges agreed, the two Democratic appointees on the panel wrote a separate opinion urging Congress to amend the removal statute so it applies to former officials.

Judge Robin Rosenbaum, joined by Judge Nancy Abudu, warned of a hypothetical in which more than a dozen states could try to prosecute top administration officials over policy disagreements. The officials would have no guarantee that a federal court would hear their defenses after leaving office, Rosenbaum noted."

Hmmmmm....that doesn't appear to be a problem before.

[Dan Schiavetta]

In the mental health field we would call the impetus for this hypothetical a "prodromal".

[Frank Drackman]

"Mental Health Field"? that's so 2000's, it's "Behavorial Health" or some other woke term. Had to deal with a "Broad Spectum" of Nuts, I mean "patients" as a Flight Surgeon. I'd usually just tell them to go have a few drinks and jerk off, seemed to work as well as anything the Shrinks would do.

Frank

[Frank Drackman]

Funny that Georgia/Texas seem to provide the cases for most of our Death Penalty, Abortion (also a "Death Penalty" albeit for the most innocent), and Labor Surpreme Decisions,
Maybe the Very (Wrong) Reverend Sandusky is right

Frank