By Savannah Green (CMC ’20) In June of 2018, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the defendant in Wayfair v. South Dakota regarding online sales tax. Prior to this case, the law did not allow states to collect sales tax from online stores unless said stores owned a physical property in the state. The precedent came from a 1992 case, Quill Corporation v. North Dakota, that had long given...
By Rafael Santa Maria (PO ’20) Most petitions to the Supreme Court never receive a writ of certiorari, and thus are never adjudicated by the nation’s highest legal authority. With thousands of cases to consider, the Court must exercise extreme selectivity. However, when a petition is backed by amicus briefs from critically-acclaimed rappers and think tanks alike, the Court may just take notice...
By Musa Kamara (PO’22) On February 19, the Supreme Court refused to hear a defamation suit filed by Kathy McKee, an actress active in the 1970s who appeared in The Bill Cosby Show, Saturday Night Live, and Sanford and Son. The suit McKee filed was particularly notable in that it was filed against Bill Cosby, a prominent public figure of the last fifty years who was convicted of numerous sex...
By Alex Simard (PO’22) Mere hours after signing a measure to avoid a second government shutdown, President Trump declared a National Emergency in order to advance his campaign promise to build a wall along the southern border. A litigious storm followed the announcement as advocacy groups amassed and began contemplating how exactly to block the President’s emergency declaration in the...
By Isaac Cui (PO ’20), Managing Editor The Supreme Court yesterday acted on Bobby Moore’s death penalty case and ordered that Moore cannot be executed because of his intellectual disability.[1] It was a small step on an arcane issue, one that does not fundamentally change the Court’s capital punishment jurisprudence. But it was nevertheless a moral victory for our Constitution. In 2002, the...
By Cameron Miller (Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at ASU ’17) Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a noted sports fan, served on the Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia for thirteen years before being nominated to the Supreme Court. During his tenure on the D.C. Circuit, numerous sports-related disputes came before then-Judge Kavanaugh; six of these cases and...
By Rafael Santa Maria (PO ’20) A grisly capital murder case might determine the constitutionality of the insanity defense. In 2009, James Kraig Kahler shot and killed his wife, his mother-in-law, and his own two daughters in Burlingame, Kansas. After being found guilty and facing a capital murder conviction, Kahler appealed to the Kansas Supreme Court in an attempt to overturn his death...
By Bryce Wachtell (PO ’21) The U.S. Supreme Court answers many questions of serious importance: what are the limits of free speech? Are LGBTQ Americans protected against discrimination? Do corporations have constitutional rights? But, at times, the questions that face the court can seem far more trivial, thought no less consequential. Such is the case in Nix v. Hedden, which forced the...
By Bryce Wachtell (PO ’21) The widespread coverage of Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing has brought the Supreme Court nomination process to national spotlight once again. It appears that with every justice nominated to the highest court, scrutiny increases and polarization grows. From accusations as grave as Anita Hill’s testimony regarding now-justice Claremont Thomas, to those as...
By Daisy Ni (PO ’21) As the highest court of the land, the Supreme Court was created alongside our executive and legislative branches to keep their power in check. To do so, the Court’s role requires an immunity from political pressure. The appointment process and life-long tenures of judges, for example, remove the pressures of direct elections and public opinion so judges can administer...
