Baby, You Can Drive My Carr . . . Or Maybe Not

The ink is barely dry on the Supreme Court’s decision in Carr v. United States, and already we have a contentious case in the Seventh Circuit questioning its meaning.  In Carr, the Court had to interpret a notoriously clumsy bit of legislation from 2006, the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (part of the so-called Adam Walsh Act).  SORNA makes it a federal crime for a person who is required to register as a sex offender to (1) travel in interstate commerce, and (2) knowingly fail to register or update a registration.  In Carr, the Court held that a person may not be convicted under SORNA based on travel that occurred prior to SORNA’s enactment.

At the time Carr was decided, the Seventh Circuit already had pending before it United States v. Vasquez.  Vasquez was convicted of a SORNA violation on the basis of stipulated facts that showed (1) he failed to register as a sex offender as he was required to do in Illinois, and (2) he subsequently traveled from Illinois to California for some undetermined purpose.  On appeal, Vasquez argued that the statute required the government to prove he had knowledge of his federal registration obligation, and that the statute exceeded Congress’s regulatory authority under the Commerce Clause.

The Seventh Circuit rejected these arguments in a majority opionion authored by Judge Bauer. 

Continue ReadingBaby, You Can Drive My Carr . . . Or Maybe Not

Best of the Blogs

What do we have this week? Over at the wonderful Mirror of Justice, you can follow a debate involving Michael Perry, Mike Scaperlanda, Robbie George, Robert Hockett and Rick Garnett  and others (I’ve linked to some but not all of the posts in the thread) on Pope Benedict XVI’s concern about the “dictatorship of relativism.”  Professor Hockett’s argument that terms like “relativism” and “tolerance” often mask conclusions rather than do much argumentative work reminded me of Steven D. Smith’s excellent new book, The Disenchantment of Secular Discourse. I just finished reading it and hope to  blog on it shortly.

At Public Discourse, Rob Vischer considers the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Christian Legal Society v. Martinez upholding a requirement at Hastings Law School that recognized student organizations may not exclude students based upon their refusal to accept the organization’s objectives or beliefs. Rob concludes:

The next challenge is clear: we must think seriously about how to help deepen our public discourse about discrimination and diversity to include recognition that associational diversity is a key component of religious and moral liberty, and that even if a university now has the right to make all groups accept everyone, it is a right best left unexercised.

At Ballkinization, Jack Balkin expresses concern over a decision Thursday by a district judge in Massachusetts v. HHS finding that the Defense of Marriage Act violates the Tenth Amendment. 

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More Contention on the Wisconsin Supreme Court

Last Thursday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court finally issued opinions on recusal rules that it adopted earlier in the term and which essentially say that a duty to recuse cannot be be based solely on the receipt of a lawful campaign contribution or a lawful independent expenditure made on a judge’s behalf. The Court also amended a preexisting rule to permit a judicial candidate’s campaign committee from soliciting funds from persons involved in proceedings in which the candidate, if elected or reelected, is likely to participate. 

The majority opinion and dissent continue to reflect the sharp and bitted divisons on the Court. I wish that would get better.

I have an article on judicial recusal coming out in the Wake Forest Law Review, so it’s a subject that I have been thinking about. I have the following quick observations on the Court’s decision. 

Continue ReadingMore Contention on the Wisconsin Supreme Court