Supreme Court

A few weeks ago the Supreme Court handed down an important yet under-noticed case, Williams-Yulee v. Florida Bar, in which a 5-4 majority upheld a Florida law that forbids candidates running in contested elections for judicial office from personally soliciting campaign contributions, even though the state permits such candidates to raise money through surrogates (campaign committees) and also allows candidates to find out who contributed to their campaigns.

In today's column, I analyze the Supreme Court oral argument held a few weeks ago in Walker v. Texas Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans, a case involving the First Amendment and Texas's regulation of license plates. Motor vehicles registered in the State of Texas must display a state-sanctioned license plate. Most vehicles use a standard-issue Texas plate that has a simple no-frills design and displays a random series of letters and numbers.

Kevin Johnson, who covers the Court’s immigration docket for SCOTUSblog, has posted an article analyzing trends in Supreme Court immigration cases over the last five years.  Although the Supreme Court has frequently departed from the normal rules of constitutional and statutory interpretation in immigration cases, Dean Johnson’s study of the 2009 through 2013 Terms suggests that “immigration exceptionalism” may be on its way out.

Neither side came away with a clear victory in the Court's decision in Alabama Department of Revenue v. CSX Transportation, Inc., as the Court remanded the case to the Eleventh Circuit. Again. The clear loser in the case is the Eleventh Circuit, which has been given the specific task that the court of appeals had already eschewed as "Sisyphean." Justice Scalia wrote the majority decision. Justice Thomas wrote the dissent, with Justice Ginsburg signing on.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the much-anticipated immigration case of Kerry v. Din. In that case, the U.S. government - in the face of strong academic commentary to the contrary - steadfastly defends the doctrine of consular non-reviewability and its bar to the judicial review of visa decisions of Department of State consular officers.

The well-established doctrine of consular non-reviewability precludes judicial review of the visa decisions of State Department consular officers. It is a first cousin of immigration law's exceptional "plenary power" doctrine, which generally immunizes from judicial review the substantive immigration decisions of Congress and the executive branch. In refusing to disturb the federal government's reliance on secret evidence to deny the non-citizen spouse of a U.S.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Mellouli v. Holder, a challenge to the removal of Moones Mellouli, a lawful permanent resident from Tunisia, based on a Kansas misdemeanor drug paraphernalia conviction for possession of a sock used to hide drugs. The record of his conviction, the touchstone in removal proceedings, did not specify the controlled substance connected to Mellouli’s “drug paraphernalia.”

On January 14, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in Mellouli v. Holder, one of several recent cases in which the Court has scrutinized the federal government's efforts to remove a lawful permanent resident from the United States based on a minor drug conviction. The frequency with which these kinds of cases recur reflects the focus of the Obama administration's removal efforts on noncitizens who have had brushes with the criminal justice system.

In Part One of this two-part series, I contended that the reading of the Obamacare statute offered by the plaintiffs in the important King v. Burwell case pending in front of the Supreme Court was problematic for reasons grounded in federalism.

On Alabama Department of Revenue v. CSX Transportation, Inc.