Regulating The Fourth Amendment Out of Existence

By: Dan McLaughlin (Diary)  |  March 21st at 11:00 AM  | 

The Fourth Amendment, which protects Americans from unreasonable searches and seizures and demands that judicial officers issuing search warrants do so only on a showing of probable cause, is an important guarantee of our civil liberties, designed to protect personal privacy – especially in the home – from random governmental snooping. The Fourth Amendment tends to get a lot of bad press because it is | Read More »

Supreme Court Decision in Hertz Case a Small Victory For Federalism

By: Dan McLaughlin (Diary)  |  February 23rd at 11:35 AM  | 

A unanimous Supreme Court this morning, in Hertz Corp. v. Friend, No. 08-1107 (U.S. Feb. 23, 2010), held that a corporation’s “principal place of business” under the federal diversity-jurisdiction statute and the Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA) refers to the place where the corporation’s high level officers direct, control, and coordinate the corporation’s activities. Lower federal courts have often metaphorically called that place the corporation’s | Read More »

PCAOB and Sarbox In The Dock

By: Dan McLaughlin (Diary)  |  May 18th at 11:46 AM  | 

The Supreme Court this morning granted certiorari in Free Enterprise Fund and Beckstead and Watts, LLP v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, et al., No. 08-861 on the Court’s docket. The case will be briefed over the summer, heard in the Fall (after, among other things, Justice Souter’s retirement, assuming all goes on schedule) and decided some time between next December and July 2010. Given | Read More »

How Republicans Should Oppose Obama’s Supreme Court Nominee

By: Dan McLaughlin (Diary)  |  May 11th at 03:17 PM  | 

At this writing, we do not know who President Obama will nominate to replace David Souter on the Supreme Court, and so it’s impossible to anticipate precisely how much Republican opposition his pick will meet with, or for that matter whether any Democrats will be opposed. Nonetheless, of this much we can be sure, from Obama’s own history and prior statements as well as that | Read More »

Good News of the Day

By: Dan McLaughlin (Diary)  |  September 18th at 01:13 PM  | 

The Rehnquist/Roberts Supreme Court’s conservative tilt is leading more nations to self-government. What, not how the NYT sees this?