Ashley DaBiere The Commentary considers the constitutionality of (1) the trial court’s exclusion of relevant mitigating evidence during the trial’s penalty phase and (2) the imposition of a death sentence by the Supreme Court during a moratorium on federal executions. In the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, the jury ultimately convicted Continue Reading »
Benjamin Wolters The devastation wreaked by the COVID-19 pandemic spurred innovations in technology and public policy. Many countries rushed to implement extensive quarantines, and some introduced disease surveillance, including location tracking to enforce quarantines. Though the United States has never implemented high-tech quarantine surveillance, such technology will certainly be available for the next disease outbreak. Continue Reading »
Arturo Nava In Brnovich, the Court will determine whether Arizona’s out-of-precinct (OOP) policy and its ballot-collection law violate Section 2 of the VRA. The Ninth Circuit held that both voting provisions violate Section 2. The Supreme Court should affirm the Ninth Circuit’s decision, invoking the Section 2 Results Test adopted by multiple circuits, and find that Continue Reading »
Albert Barkan Article II of the United States Constitution details the methods by which presidential subordinate officers must be appointed. Despite its presence in the Constitution’s original text, the Appointments Clause remains ambiguous. The Clause provides different appointment processes for principal and “inferior officers,” but does not distinguish between these officers’ functions. In United States v. Continue Reading »
Rachel Sereix In February of 2018, Texas and nineteen other states filed suit against the federal government seeking to have the entire ACA struck down. In the consolidated case California v. Texas, the Court is considering four questions: First, whether Texas and the individual plaintiffs have standing to challenge the individual mandate; Second, whether the Continue Reading »
Brittany Day In Ford Motor Co. v. Montana Eighth Judicial District Court, the Supreme Court will have the opportunity to redefine the nexus requirement for exercising personal jurisdiction over non-resident defendants. The Court will decide whether a national company with an extensive in-state market for a product is amenable to suit in a forum state Continue Reading »
Brooke Reczka For many school-choice advocates, Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue is the chance to extend the Supreme Court’s decision in Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Inc. v. Comer in 2017. In Trinity Lutheran, the Supreme Court held that a state’s exclusion of a church from a public benefit program to resurface playgrounds discriminated against religion in violation Continue Reading »
Charles Fendrych On its surface, deferred action is simple: it is a decision by Executive Branch officials to postpone deportation proceedings against an individual or group that is otherwise eligible to be removed from the United States.Deferred action is an exercise of the Executive’s inherent authority to manage its policies, but is not expressly grounded Continue Reading »
Catherine Tarantino The United States has come a long way in promoting racial equality since the 1866 and 1964 Civil Rights Acts, but racial animus still plays an impermissible role in many contracting and employment decisions. Comcast Corporation v. National Association of African American-Owned Media and Entertainment Studios offers the Supreme Court the opportunity to decide which Continue Reading »
Katherine Carter In October of 2019, the Supreme Court heard the arguments of two cases presenting the same inquiry: whether Title VII’s prohibition on sex discrimination encompasses discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Currently, twenty-one states as well as the District of Columbia expressly prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation by statute or regulation. Continue Reading »
