Today in Supreme Court History: December 9, 2015

12/9/2015: Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin II argued.

Comments

[Dan Schiavetta]

MacMath v. United States, 248 U.S. 151 (decided December 9, 1918): clerk employed as “acting U.S. weigher” at collection port not entitled to $2,500 statutory salary assigned to weighers (collection ports were notoriously a gold mine of booty, but I suppose not for lowly weighers, “acting” or otherwise)

Warger v. Shauers, 574 U.S. 40 (decided December 9, 2014): enforcing Fed. R. Evid. 606(b): juror cannot testify, and court cannot receive affidavit, as to statements during deliberations (here, as to bias) (exceptions: jury considered extraneous prejudicial information; was subjected to outside influence; or foreman made a mistake on the verdict form) (oddly, as I write this, I am about to go into court to pick a jury)

Virginia v. Maryland, 540 U.S. 56 (decided December 9, 2003): What to do about the Potomac River? Charles I, as a favor to his friend Lord Baltimore, had set the Maryland border on the Virginia side of the river, instead of in the middle or along the thalweg; this decision overruled Charles and said Maryland couldn’t interfere with Virginia’s use of the river, in particular drawing water from it for drinking. (The Mount Vernon Conference of 1785, a precursor to the Constitutional Convention, had already made the same decision, but it no longer had legal force.)

[JoeFromtheBronx]

Rehnquist handled the 7-2 interstate dispute opinion. He could take advantage of his interest in history, which he showed in multiple books that he wrote.

[John F. Carr]

The Karen Read case in Massachusetts is about to re-enact Warger v. Shuers. Her first trial ended in mistrial. There is evidence that the jurors all thought she was not guilty on the most serious charges. The evidence is inadmissible statements of individual jurors after trial. So the state Supreme Court is likely to allow her to be retried on all charges. The DA hired a special prosecutor for the second trial.

[apedad]

Re: VA v MD

Colonial Beach, VA, had piers extending into the Potomac River and since the ends of the piers were located "in" Maryland, they built casinos.

Casinos were verboten in VA, but this allowed Virginians to legally gamble.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Ha!

[JoeFromtheBronx]

Fisher lost 5-3. Kagan did not take part. Kennedy (majority) and Alito (dissent) both had opinion announcements. Alito's went on for over sixteen minutes.

https://www.oyez.org/cases/2015/14-981

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It might be notable that Brown v. Board of Education was also argued OTD. It was reargued 364 days later.

[Argued December 9, 1952 // Reargued December 8, 1953]

The justices along with people around here continue to argue what it means as applied to race conscious education policy.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

The conservatives have some thoughts about hot-button issues involving affirmative action, guns, and parent rights to know if their children are openly trans at school.

https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/120924zor_32q3.pdf

[John F. Carr]

From the dissent in the Hawaii case: "Although the interlocutory posture of the petition weighs against correcting this error now..."

This reminds me of a guy who wanted to take his traffic ticket to the Supreme Court. Not a guilty verdict. An adverse interlocutory ruling on a question where state law dominates. I said there was no way the Supreme Court was going to touch it.

However, the Hawaii defendant does at least have a reasonably clear federal question.