With the predictable 5-4 lineup, the Supreme Court ruled yesterday that, in order to exclude from evidence incriminating statements to the police, criminal suspects must have unambiguously invoked their right to remain silent. The case essentially asked, what constitutes a waiver of one’s Miranda rights? Does sitting silent, unresponsive, for nearly three hours, as did the suspect, Van Chester Thompkins, [...]
My Harvard Independent column for this week addresses the retirement of John Paul Stevens and the issue of picking his successor. Read the original here. If they made posters of Supreme Court Justices, I’d put John Paul Stevens on my bedroom wall. The man is a progressive hero — first and foremost, for his longevity. In 2006, the liberal radio [...]
The U.S. Supreme Court may be about to render the most important business decision of the decidedly pro-business Roberts era, but one might not know it from the details of the case. The plaintiff is a small conservative advocacy group, not a major corporation; the focal point is a corporate-funded anti-Hillary Clinton documentary that was banned by the FEC, as [...]
Crucial crossroad, or more of the same? Every election cycle, we are told that the future of the Supreme Court, and particularly the future of abortion jurisprudence, is at stake. This election-centric view infects the mainstream media, which routinely publish October headlines like “This time, Roe v. Wade really could hang in the balance,” as the Los Angeles Times declared [...]
Roberts, Kennedy, and Collegiality on the Supreme Court During the summer of 2006, Chief Justice John Roberts spoke publicly about the need for greater unity on the nation’s highest court. In a commencement address at Georgetown Law School, he urged that “unanimity, or near-unanimity” would yield “clarity and guidance” for lawyers and lower courts trying to understand the Supreme Court’s [...]
Obama’s nominations will be liberal, but not in the conventional sense For better or for worse, people will view it as historically significant,” mused Harvard Law Professor Randall Kennedy on the election of the Harvard Law Review’s first black president in 1990. Less than two decades later, the student in question has once again been thrust into the spotlight of [...]
I wrote in the most recent issue of the HPR that the Supreme Court would be unlikely to dramatically alter its abortion jurisprudence, regardless of the outcome of the presidential election. My piece was meant to quiet hyperventilating liberals who feared that a McCain presidency automatically spelled doom for abortion rights. Of course, my prediction is now moot: The Court [...]
