U.S. Supreme Court – Page 86 – Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog

Cert Grant: What Is “Knowing” Identity Theft?

Post author:Michael M. O'Hear
Post published:October 20, 2008
Post category:Criminal Law & Process Federal Criminal Law & Process U.S. Supreme Court

A federal statute, 18 U.S.C. § 1028A, imposes a mandatory two-year prison sentence on defendants who “knowingly” use “a means of identification of another person” in the course of committing a felony. The two years is in addition to the sentence imposed for the underlying felony. But what exactly does the word “knowingly” refer to in the statute: is it enough that the defendant knew that he was using a means of identification, or must the government also prove that the defendant knew the identification belonged to another person? This is the question raised in a case that the Supreme Court agreed to hear earlier today, United States v. Flores-Figueroa. The unpublished opinion below can be found at 2008 WL 1808508.

SCOTUS Blog summarizes the facts as follows:

When Should Records Be Sealed in Employment Discrimination Cases?

Post author:Paul M. Secunda
Post published:October 15, 2008
Post category:Labor & Employment Law U.S. Supreme Court

Thanks to friend of the blog, Jack Sargent, for pointing me to this fascinating dispute before the U.S Supreme Court now concerning the sealing of a record in an employment discrimination case.

From the reporters committee for freedom of the press blog:

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press today filed a brief asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review a decision that allowed all records in a federal employment discrimination case to be hidden from the public. The Reporters Committee filed the brief on behalf of itself and 29 other leading media organizations.

The friend-of-the-court brief was filed in support of The Legal Intelligencer, which petitioned the Supreme Court for review after the Third Circuit Court of Appeals rejected its request to intervene in Doe v. C.A.R.S. Protection Plus Inc. The newspaper sought to unseal the docket and record in Doe, a case in which the plaintiff claimed she was wrongly fired because she had an abortion.

What Do Reasonable Jurors Get to Decide After Scott v. Harris?

Post author:Bruce E. Boyden
Post published:October 14, 2008
Post category:Legal Scholarship Speakers at Marquette U.S. Supreme Court

This is my second post commenting on Dan Kahan’s talk last week about his paper, co-authored with David Hoffman and Donald Braman, entitled “Whose Eyes are You Going to Believe? Scott v. Harris and the Perils of Cognitive Illiberalism.” (It was originally one post but got long.) Scott v. Harris is the case involving the video of the police chase, a video the Supreme Court found so compelling that it ruled the denial of summary judgement to the defendant police officer was error. Kahan and his co-authors argue that Scott harmed the legitimacy of the justice system when it concluded that all reasonable people would view the video tape the same way. In fact, Kahan et al. demonstrate that a significant number of potential jurors disagree with the majority’s view.

On Friday, I tangled with the article’s proposed solution to the problem of denying those jurors their day in court. Today, I want to examine the decision itself–did the majority really rule that no reasonable juror could conclude that the force used in the case was excessive? That’s actually not the way it looks to me. Rather, it looks to me like, after a preliminary finding about dangerousness, the Scott majority pretty much threw the whole fact vs. law distinction out the window. Scott doesn’t just insult “unreasonable” jurors; even reasonable jurors get short shrift.