Today in Supreme Court History: June 13, 1977

6/13/1977: Justice Tom C. Clark dies.

Justice Tom C. Clark

Comments

[Dan Schiavetta]

Won't accept my case summaries. I'll post them one by one to see where the hangup is.

Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (decided June 13, 1966): asking questions of detained witness without advising of right to remain silent violates Fifth Amendment guarantee against self incrimination (Congress tried to abrogate this holding by statute in 1968, but the statute was chipped away at and finally struck down in Dickerson v. United States, 2000) (Miranda was re-tried in Arizona court without the invalid confession and convicted; charge was rape and kidnapping, 104 Ariz. 174)

[Dan Schiavetta]

Romano v. Oklahoma, 512 U.S. 1 (decided June 13, 1994): jury can consider defendant’s previous death sentence (for a concomitant killing) in determining sentence for murder

[Dan Schiavetta]

ZF Automotive US v. Luxshare, Ltd., 596 U.S. 619 (decided June 13, 2022): overseas arbitration proceedings are not “foreign tribunals” for which discovery can be sought under 28 U.S.C. §1782

[Dan Schiavetta]

United States v. Bryant, 579 U.S. 140 (decided June 13, 2016): upholding 18 U.S.C. §117(a), which requires increased penalty for domestic violence on Native American Reservations if two previous convictions in Native American courts even if not represented by counsel; Sixth Amendment right to counsel does not apply in Native American courts for crimes with penalties of less than one year, 25 U.S.C. §1302(c)(2), and procedural protections of Indian Civil Rights Act of 1968 were adequate

[Dan Schiavetta]

Kemp v. United States, 596 U.S. 528 (decided June 13, 2022): instead of appealing, defendant must get relief from final judgment under F.R.C.P. 60(b)(1) where court makes procedural mistake even though mistake not obvious (Eleventh Circuit had miscalculated time after drug conviction to seek cert) (and here defendant had missed the applicable deadline for a 60(b)(1) motion) (in the Court’s historical review of postjudgment relief it uses the evocative phrase, “statutory language obviously transplanted from another legal source will often bring the old soil with it”)

[Noscitur a sociis]

This is a bit off. The holding is that a request for relief from judgment based on a judge's legal error is a request based on a "mistake", and thus is governed by Rule 60(b)(1): Kemp was arguing that it's a request for "any other reason" under 60(b)(6). That matters because requests under (b)(1) must be made within a year of the judgment, while those under (b)(6) don't need to be: the upshot is that Kemp's motion was untimely. The opinion doesn't say that this course of action is required in lieu of an appeal (and indeed, Kemp likely would have been fine had he just filed a timely appeal of the original erroneous adverse decision in the first place).

[Dan Schiavetta]

But the Court was treating it as 60(b)(1).

[Noscitur a sociis]

Yes, because the defendant filed a 60(b) motion rather than an appeal. The court wasn't suggesting and didn't hold that an erroneous adverse judgment can't be challenged through a normal appeal.

[Dan Schiavetta]

OK, I'll look at it again. Thanks for your input.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Nyquist v. Mauclet, 432 U.S. 1 (decided June 13, 1977): denying college financial assistance to resident aliens violates Equal Protection

[JoeFromtheBronx]

Uncle Martin appreciated this ruling.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Favorite_Martian

[Dan Schiavetta]

As I suspected, the hang up was with the below case, which had a link to a John Oliver segment. I've deleted the link but you can google it.

Puerto Rico v. Franklin California Tax-Free Trust, 579 U.S. 115 (decided June 13, 2016): Puerto Rico statute allowing public utilities to structure their debts preempted by federal Bankruptcy Code (Puerto Rico was undergoing a fiscal crisis and found it had been singled out in a mysterious change to the Bankruptcy Code which of course it had no voice in; see John Oliver’s segment on this, starting at 9:00)

and also:

Montana v. Egelhoff, 518 U.S. 37 (decided June 13, 1996): Due Process not offended by state law barring defendant from arguing he was intoxicated as a defense to mental state required for crime (here, murder by gunshot wound) (his blood alcohol was 0.36% even some hours after the incident! 0.5% will kill you)

Katzenbach v. Morgan, 384 U.S. 641 (decided June 13, 1966): Voting Rights Act requiring everyone with a sixth grade education to be allowed to vote superseded New York law requiring proficiency in English (this would have applied specifically to my grandfather, who went up to sixth grade in Italy but was never functionally literate in English; his career as a groundskeeper started in the Depression-era Works Progress Administration under FDR but by the time I got to know him he always voted Republican)

Gojack v. United States, 384 U.S. 702 (decided June 13, 1966): contempt against person who spoke back to HUAC and didn’t answer questions reversed because HUAC never formally authorized investigation into this area (“Communist Party activity in the field of labor”)

[F.D. Wolf]

On this day, June 13, 1777, Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, first arrived in the United States, bearing letters of introduction from Benjamin Franklin. On July 31, Congress commissioned him a major general in the Continental Army.

He was nineteen years old.

[Dan Schiavetta]

At the time the war was not going well. He was no “sunshine patriot”.

[F.D. Wolf]

Indeed. He even offered his services for no compensation. His assistance to America is what likely allowed him to keep his head during the French Revolution, as our government undertook various diplomatic measures to keep him alive during his five-year imprisonment in France.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

I believe his imprisonment during the French Revolution was at the hands of the Prussians and Austrians - he sought sanctuary in Austrian lines because of his disgust with the French Revolution, but he was still deemed too much of an enemy of monarchy to be kept free. He ended up in an Austrian prison, and after an unsuccessful rescue attempt, his release was negotiated by Napoleon.

[F.D. Wolf]

You are, as usual, correct. He was shuffled around various Austrian and Prussian prisons. I apologize for my egregiously erroneous post. I am loath to make excuses, but I sometimes (which is to say, often) lazily and haphazardly edit and end up with a garbled mess of a post.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

Tom Clark was Truman's best SCOTUS appointee (low bar).

He leaned conservative, dissenting in multiple Warren Court opinions. Nonetheless, he supported various liberal/libertarian cases, including writing Mapp v. Ohio (exclusionary rule) and Abington v. Schempp (bible reading).

Johnson pressured him to resign by appointing his son as attorney general (the son later was known for left-wing causes). Clark then pinch hit in the court of appeals.

Clark wrote a famous article on the right to abortion that was quoted by many federal judges. Clark agreed with Douglas' opinion in Griswold v. Connecticut. Clark later wrote an article supporting the legalization of the personal possession of marijuana. He even suggested it was protected by the constitutional right to privacy.