Nov

5

Obama’s Applause Lines on Education

Posted by: Alan J. Borsuk | November 5, 2009 | Leave a Comment

President Barack Obama’s 35-minute speech on education at Wright Middle School in Madison on Wednesday was interrupted by applause at many points, but most of the reaction was pretty low-key. Three lines drew what seemed to be more enthusiastic responses from the crowd of more than 500, most of them teachers, parents, and students at the 250-student school. Each of [...]

Nov

5

Myron Gordon, R.I.P.

Posted by: Richard M. Esenberg | November 5, 2009 | 1 Comment

I only really knew Myron Gordon as a judge on senior status and tried only one case before him. It was a challenge by the NAACP to the method of electing judges in Milwaukee County. The plaintiffs alleged that county-wide elections of judges denied black voters the opportunity to elect candidates of their own choice [...]

Oct

31

Seventh Circuit Criminal Case of the Week: Of Hearsay and Bootstraps

Posted by: Michael M. O'Hear | October 31, 2009 | 1 Comment

The court staked out no new legal ground in its opinions last week, so I’ll just briefly describe a case that nicely illustrates a classic problem in evidence law.  Based on information provided by a confidential informant, Milwaukee police stopped a Ford Excursion on suspicion of drug activity.  Inside were Marc Cannon (the driver), David Harris (Cannon’s cousin), [...]

Oct

26

Seventh Circuit Criminal Case of the Week: Other Bad Acts and the “Intricately Related” Doctrine

Posted by: Michael M. O'Hear | October 26, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Criminal law and procedure are structured around the act requirement: a defendant is prosecuted for performing a specifically identified unlawful act, the criminal trial is designed to determine whether the defendant actually committed that act, and, once the defendant has been convicted and punished, we commonly say that he has paid his debt to society and should be [...]

Oct

26

Iqbal’s Plausibility Ruling Heading for a Congressional Hearing

Posted by: Paul M. Secunda | October 26, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Joe Seiner (South Carolina) brings to my attention a very important development in the world of civil procedure and employment discrimination law.
David Ingram of the National Law Journal reports:
Ashcroft v. Iqbal, the 5-month-old U.S. Supreme Court decision that has become a thorn in the side of the plaintiffs bar, will get a Capitol Hill [...]

Oct

21

Federal Sentencing and the Lack of Theory in Criminal Justice

Posted by: Chris Donovan | October 21, 2009 | 1 Comment

Defendants in federal criminal cases often cooperate with the government to get their sentence reduced, especially when facing an extremely high statutory mandatory minimum (it is not uncommon for federal defendants to face mandatory minimums of ten years or higher).  In these cases, to get below the mandatory minimum, the government must file a motion to [...]

Oct

19

Seventh Circuit Criminal Case of the Week: Good Enough for Government Work

Posted by: Michael M. O'Hear | October 19, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Under 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(A), certain drug offenders face a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment if they have two prior drug felony convictions.  As befits such a draconian statute, special procedural protections have been adopted to ensure that the mandatory minimum does not take defendants by suprise at sentencing.  Thus, 21 U.S.C. § 851(a)(1) requires [...]

Oct

14

President Chester A. Arthur and the Birthers, 1880’s Style

Posted by: J. Gordon Hylton | October 14, 2009 | 1 Comment

The Obama citizenship “debate” has surprisingly brought former president Chester A. Arthur (1829-1886) back into the pages of American newspapers, which is no small feat.  Unlike President Obama, who is clearly eligible to hold the nation’s highest office, Arthur, the twenty-first president (1881-84), may well have been an “unconstitutional” president.
Although Arthur is frequently seen as Millard [...]

Oct

13

A Case For Jury Nullification

Posted by: Chris Donovan | October 13, 2009 | 7 Comments

Jury nullification is a controversial issue in criminal law.  There are undoubtedly many definitions of it, but it occurs most fundamentally when a jury acquits a defendant even when the letter of the law says that he or she committed a crime.  Appearing at first blush as a theory for anarchists, it is a well-established power [...]

Oct

13

Reinert on the Actual Success of Bivens Claims and Its Implications for the Constitutional Rights of Federal Employees

Posted by: Paul M. Secunda | October 13, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Alex Reinert (Cardozo) has posted on SSRN his forthcoming article in the Stanford Law Review: Measuring the Success of Bivens Litigation and its Consequences for the Individual Liability Model.
Here’s the abstract:
In Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics, 403 U.S. 388 (1971), the Supreme Court held that the Federal Constitution [...]

Oct

11

Seventh Circuit Criminal Case of the Week: Halfway Houses Back on the Menu

Posted by: Michael M. O'Hear | October 11, 2009 | Leave a Comment

If Congress makes an obvious error in drafting a statute, can a court correct that error by effectively adding something to the statute that is not there?  Such was the interesting jurisprudential question the Seventh Circuit confronted last January in United States v. Head, 552 F.3d 640 (2009).  Because of a mix-up with statutory cross-references, the [...]

Oct

10

ACS Presentation on 2008-09 Supreme Court Opinions

Posted by: Joshua Pollack | October 10, 2009 | Leave a Comment

With the beginning of the 2009-2010 term of the Supreme Court, the Marquette Chapter of American Constitution Society for Law and Public Policy (ACS) spent a lunch-hour discussing some of the more interesting cases of the past 2008-2009 term. Leading the lunch discussion were Marquette professors Blinka, McChrystal, and Secunda.
Professor Blinka started the lunch discussion [...]

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