Federal Law & Legal System – Page 41 – Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog

Series: Looking Back at the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2013 Term

Post author:Bruce E. Boyden
Post published:June 27, 2014
Post category:Public U.S. Supreme Court

I’m excited to announce a new summer series here at the Marquette Law Faculty Blog, one in which members of our faculty will be analyzing some of the most important U.S. Supreme Court decisions in their areas from the term that just concluded. Our first post is from Michael O’Hear on Burrage v. United States and Paroline v. United States, two important criminal law cases decided in January and April 2014, respectively. Posts in the series will have titles starting with “US Supreme Court Review.”

Wisconsin Becomes 27th State to Allow Same-Sex Marriage

Post author:Lisa A. Mazzie
Post published:June 9, 2014
Post category:Civil Rights Constitutional Law Public Western District of Wisconsin

On Friday afternoon, June 6, 2014, marriage equality arrived in Wisconsin. Judge Barbara Crabb of the United States District Court, Western District of Wisconsin, held Wisconsin’s “marriage amendment” to be unconstitutional.

Article XIII, section 13 of Wisconsin’s constitution provides that “[o]nly a marriage between one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in this state.” This amendment was passed by Wisconsin voters in November 2006. Since that time, however, a number of states have extended the right to marry to same-sex couples, and other state bans on same-sex marriages have been struck down by federal judges. At the federal level, the United States Supreme Court last summer struck down the Defense of Marriage Act, thus requiring the federal government to recognize state-sanctioned marriages of same-sex couples.

Earlier this year, the ACLU filed Wolf v. Walker in federal court, challenging the marriage amendment. The plaintiffs in Wolf are eight same-sex couples who live in Wisconsin. Some of those couples have been legally married in other states and want Wisconsin to recognize their marriages; others want to marry and would do so in Wisconsin but for the marriage amendment. On Friday, June 6, 2014, they got their wish.

Bond v. United States: SCOTUS Interprets Criminal Statute Narrowly to Preserve Federal-State Balance

Post author:Michael M. O'Hear
Post published:June 3, 2014
Post category:Constitutional Law Criminal Law & Process Federalism Public U.S. Supreme Court

In an opinion sure to be cited by many federal criminal defendants for years to come, the Supreme Court yesterday overturned the conviction of Carol Anne Bond under the Chemical Weapons Convention Implementation Act. Although few defendants are prosecuted under this statute, the Court’s decision in Bond is noteworthy for its approach to the interpretation of federal criminal statutes. The Court adopted a narrow interpretation of the Implementation Act in order to preserve what it called the “usual constitutional balance of federal and state power.” (12) This interpretive principle is not a new one, but the Court applied it in an unusually aggressive fashion in Bond. The opinion is sure to be a favorite of defendants who find themselves prosecuted in federal court for offenses traditionally and routinely handled in state courts.

The underlying facts in Bond were a mix of the mundane and the bizarre.