Two Important U.S. Supreme Court Cases

On December 5th and 7th, the U.S. Supreme Court heard two cases that received widespread attention. NPR's Legal Affairs Correspondent Nina Totenberg presents them both. The first case concerned a web designer who didn't want to follow a Colorado anti-discrimination statute that would not allow her to refuse to create same-sex wedding sites under the theory that her designs were a form of speech and she shouldn't be forced to present a message with which she disagreed. 4 min. 38 sec.

The second involved election law and the legal status of a novel theory that only state legislatures, not state courts or governors, have the last say about elections. Former President Trump's supporters tried to use a form of this theory to overturn the 2020 election results. 4 min. 45 sec.

There is no transcript for either recording but available with both is a text which is almost a transcript.

More Cakes and Gay Rights

A baker in Northern Ireland refused to make a cake with the message "Support Gay Mariage" for a gay man and the UK Supreme Court has just ruled that the bakery has the right to do so. The announcement of the judgment of October 10, 2018 can be found here. 8 min 52 sec, no transcript. The Supreme Court website has a written summary of the judgment and links to videos of the court hearing oral arguments in May of this year. The BBC’s coverage of the case contains several short videos and a history of this legal battle.
The U.S. Supreme Court decided a case about a wedding cake for a gay mariage in June of this year. This blog's posts about the case before it was decided can be found here. Some reports of the June decision can be found here and here.

American, Married, Child Born Abroad...

American, married, child born abroad - is the child an American citizen? NPR's All Things Considered has a story about this with a surprising answer. Usually yes, but the State Department says genetic testing is necessary when the married couple is same-sex. Even if one of the parents listed on the birth certificate is a U.S. citizen, only genetically related children qualify as U.S. citizens. Several same-sex married couples are challenging this in court. 3 min 49 sec, transcript available.

Wedding Cake and the U.S. Constitution

NPR’s Nina Totenberg has two reports about an important case argued this week before the U.S. Supreme Court which revolves around a wedding cake. A same-sex couple asked a baker to make a cake for their wedding and he refused, saying it was against his religious principles. The constitutional issue that brought the incident to the Court are the baker’s First Amendment free speech right vs. a Colorado anti-discrimination law. This case is important because of the effect that a decision in favor of the baker could have in other situations, so there were many hypothetical questions posed by the justices.
Totenberg’s report just before the argument can be found here. 6 min 31 sec, transcript available.
The second, just after the oral argument, can be found here. 5 min 58 sec, transcript available.
The name of the case is Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. The recording of the oral arguments is now available on the Court's web site. The transcript is available here. You can find some in-depth discussion of the case here on the SCOTUSblog web site.

UK Supreme Court Ruling on Pension Rights for Same-Sex Married Couples

In the case of Walker v Innospec Limited, the UK Supreme Court "disapplied" part of the Equality Act which allowed Walker’s former employer to refuse to pay a pension on his death to his husband on the grounds that the act was incompatible with European Union law. You can hear the judgment summary (judgment of 12 July) read by Lord Kerr here. 6 min 34 sec, no transcript, but a two-page press summary is available here.

The End of the U.S. Supreme Court OT 2016

The end of June means the end of the U.S. Supreme Court term which traditionally is when the decisions on hard cases, left to the last, are announced. This year, because the Court had only 8 justices for most of the term, not as many controversial cases were heard.

If you want to hear the results for the cases we have talked about in this blog --

You can find the decision in the Slants case  here  (previously presented here and here), The Court held the group could use the name the Slants.

You can find the answer to the question asked in Trinity Lutheran - can the state of Missouri refuse to help a Lutheran preschool rubberize its playground - here. No it can't.

You can hear the result of the shot across the border case here. The Court said it was wrong to grant the border patrol agent qualified immunity from suit and sent the case back to a lower court.

Another decision of interest is about a citizenship rule which distinguished between unmarried mothers and unmarried fathers who had to reside for much longer before being eligible to transmit their citizenship.

Coming up next term, with a full complement of justices, are cases about President Trump's travel ban,  whether a baker can refuse to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding, and gerrymandering.

Landmark Cases of the U.S. Supreme Court Explained

Heightened Scrutiny is a new podcast about the Supreme Court's landmark civil rights cases created by a self-described « attorney and professor who suffers from an incurable obsession with the Supreme Court and constitutional law. » The landmark cases featured so far are Roe v. Wade (abortion), Texas v. Johnson (flag burning and free speech), Loving v. Virginia (law forbidding marriage between blacks and whites), Kelo v. New London (eminent domain), Bowers v. Hardwick (anti-sodomy law), Lawrence v. Texas (anti-sodomy law), Employment Division v. Smith (peyote and religious freedom). 30 to 40 minutes, no transcript.

Sex and the U.S. Constitution

Geoffrey Stone, professor of law at the University of Chicago, has just published a book, Sex and the Constitution: Sex, Religion, and Law from America's Origins to the Twenty-First Century. You can find a video of an interview with Stone at the National Constitution Center here. 1 h, no transcript.

Trump and the Supreme Court

On NPR’s All Things Considered Nina Totenberg talks about what Donald Trump’s presidency will mean for the Supreme Court, especially regarding abortion and same sex marriage rulings. 3 min 56 sec, transcript available.

U.S. Supreme Court - Affordable Care Act

Nina Totenberg, on NPR’s All Things Considered, explains here Thursday's U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). 5 min 42 sec, transcript will be available. The Court will deliver its last opinions today (Friday) and then on Monday. Still to come, the ruling on same-sex marriage, in the case of Obergefell v. Hodges.

More on Same-Sex Marriage and the U.S. Supreme Court

In this week's episode of Amicus, Slate's Dahlia Lithwick interviews one of the lawyers who argued last month before the U.S. Supreme Court against same-sex bans on marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges. The lawyer, Douglas Hallward-Driemeier, explains some of the reasoning on both sides of the legal issues. You can also hear bits of the actual oral arguments. 35 min., no transcript.
36 minutes of excerpts ("super-cuts") from the two-and-a-half hour oral arguments can be found here, on SCOTUSblog. You can hear the full recording of the arguments here on the official Supreme Court site which also has the transcript available.

Same-Sex Marriage before the U.S. Supreme Court

NPR’s legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg presents the stories of some of the « accidental activists » who are at the center of the legal battle challenging state bans on same-sex marriages. The oral argument on April 28 in these four cases will be longer than the usual one hour. According to SCOTUSblog, transcripts and the audio of the arguments will be posted rapidly (within a few hours) and the cases will probably decided by the end of June. 11 min 18 sec, transcript available.
More about the cases can be found here. Slate Magazine's Dahlia Lithwick, on her podcast Amicus, interviews Supreme Court advocate Paul M. Smith about the legal issues in the four cases. 28 min, no transcript.

2015 at the U.S. Supreme Court — Jury Selection

NPR's legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg's look at what the U.S. Supreme Court might do in 2015, especially concerning the Affordable Care Act and same sex marriage can be found here. 5 min 41 sec, transcript available.

Another NPR story, this time about how jurors are selected, can be found here. 3 min 29 sec, transcript available.

What the Supreme Court Didn't Do

When the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear appeals from lower courts which had invalidated state bans on same-sex marriage, the effect was to make such bans unconstitutional in many states. NPR's Nina Totenburg explains this (and talks about cases the Court will decide) here. 7 min.

Another NPR story about the effect of the Court's refusal to hear same-sex marriage cases can be found here. 4 min, 16 sec.

Geoffrey Stone on the U.S. Supreme Court

SCOTUSblog interviewed Geoffrey Stone, professor of law at the University of Chicago, on June 14 and presented the interview in several installments. In the first one, 18 minutes long, Stone talks about his year as a Supreme Court clerk and how he was asked to teach at the University of Chicago where he had finished his studies two years earlier. In the second Stone describes three modes of constitutional interpretation (originalism, judicial restaint, the "Carolene Products" approach of different levels of scrutiny). In the following parts Stone talks, among other things, about what an ideal Supreme Court Justice would be, how Justices are confirmed. At the end of part six he makes a few predictions about the cases that had not yet been decided by the Court and makes at least one mistake.

Unreliable Evidence is Back

BBC Radio 4's Unreliable Evidence with Clive Anderson has begun a new series this week with a programme about the way the law treats cohabiting (unmarried) couples. Next week's programme is "How Free Is Our Speech?"
43 min, no transcript

Marriage Equality before the U.S. Supreme Court

This week the U.S. Supreme Court will hear two cases about same-sex marriage. SCOTUSblog has posted an interview (7 min, no transcript) with its founder, Tom Goldstein, by Bloomberg Law. Goldstein gives pointers about what to look for during the oral arguments. Bloomberg Law also has a short (1min 30 sec, no transcript) video presenting the 5 legal questions presented by the two cases.
More background on the two cases can be found here on SCOTUSblog. A good place to start is here.
UPDATE: Oyez Project at Chicago-Kent School of law and the Institute on the Supreme Court of the United States (ISCOTUS) have produced a what they have called a "deep dive" into the same-sex marriage cases -   a series of 8 short videos explaining the jurisdiction and merits questions of these cases in plain English. Very useful to understanding these two complex cases.
UPDATE : The recordings of the oral arguments, complete with a synced transcript, have been posted on the Oyez site. Hollingsworth v. Perry, the California case about Proposition 8, is here. 80 min.
United States v. Windsor, about DOMA (the federal Defense of Marriage Act) is here. The first 53 minutes in Windsor were spent on procedural questions. The discussion "on the merits" (substantive, not procedural questions) begins at 54 min. The total recording is 115 min.
Listening to the oral arguments in Supreme Court cases is always a good way to observe how American jurists go about thinking about difficult legal questions.
We will probably have to wait to the end of June for the Court's opinions.

Law and Social Change

When Harvard was reserved for men, Radcliffe College was its female counterpart. The two finally merged in 1999 but the Radcliffe Institute remains. This May it organized a panel discussion, From Front Lines to High Courts: The Law and Social Change, discussing the question with special reference to the issues of racial equality, abortion, and gay rights. The video is 1h 22 min long, no transcript.

Family law and federalism in the U.S.

NPR's Morning Edition of April 4 explores a question of family law and federalism. In the U.S. family law is generally the prerogative of the individual States.  Either through legislation or court decisions, several States now allow same-sex marriages. But in 1996 a federal law, the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), was enacted. This law prohibits the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages. As a result, same-sex married couples are not allowed to file joint federal income tax returns, for instance, and a surviving spouse cannot receive Social Security benefits. One such surviving spouse brought suit and the First Circuit Court of Appeals will begin hearings new Monday on whether the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional.
streaming or downloadable .mp3 - 4 min 24 sec, transcript available.

Justice

Michael Sandel, professor of government at Harvard University, spoke at the Harvard Book Store January 2, 2010, presenting the ideas he develops in his book Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?
The presentation involves lots of interaction with the audience. You will feel pulled in too.
video, 55 min. no transcript
The Amazon page presenting the book has a short (3min52) video on it from Harvard University. On the Harvard site, you can find a longer (28 min.) video with excerpts from his class entitled Justice — starting with the classic trolley problems. Highly recommended.
Added later  - you can find videos of the complete classes (12 episodes) here. No transcripts, but readings provided by Professor Sandel can be found here. Sandel also provides discussion guides for two levels - beginner and advanced.