All posts tagged: Supreme Court

Faculty in the Media

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In the wake of a leaked Supreme Court draft opinion indicating that the historic Roe v. Wade ruling could be overturned, Temple Law faculty and staff lend their expertise to national media conversations surrounding this unprecedented development. Interim Dean Rachel Rebouché | Rolling Stone | If the leaked opinion overturning Roe becomes law, it “will have bent the moral arc of the universe backward,” writes interim Dean Rachel Rebouché and co-authors David S. Cohen and Greer Donley in Rolling Stone. Click to read. Interim Dean Rachel Rebouché | Bloomberg Law | Justice Alito’s draft opinion in Dobbs would subject laws regulating abortion to rational basis review. Interim Dean Rachel Rebouché explains what that means and how it might apply. Click to read. Interim Dean Rachel Rebouché | Washington Examiner | Returning abortion regulation to the states will invite laws that disrupt longstanding interstate cooperation, says interim Dean Rachel Rebouché. Click to read. Professor Craig Green | The Philadelphia Inquirer | Justice Alito’s draft opinion in Dobbs may have roots in his very first opinion, a …

Temple Law Faculty Reacts to the Trump v. Mazars USA and Trump v. Vance Decisions

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On July 9, 2020, Chief Justice John Roberts delivered a 7-2 opinion in Trump v. Mazars USA, refusing to enforce congressional subpoenas that sought President Trump’s tax returns and other financial records about himself, his children, and affiliated businesses. On July 9, 2020, Chief Justice John Roberts delivered a 7-2 opinion in Trump v. Vance, allowing state prosecutors to subpoena financial records concerning President Trump and his businesses. Craig Green Professor of Law Trump v. Mazars USA: Just months before the presidential election, the Supreme Court declined to enforce subpoenas that could have publicly revealed President Trump’s tax returns and financial conduct. Congressional committees demanded various financial records using their “legislative power,” seeking to investigate the need for possible statutory reform about corruption, terrorism, money laundering, or election interference. One committee also claimed oversight power to investigate executive misconduct. Mazars is the first time that any Supreme Court examined a congressional subpoena for a President’s personal information. The majority created a new “balanced approach” that tried to respect the long history of congressional subpoenas without …

Temple Law Faculty React to the Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of Univ. of California SCOTUS Decision

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On June 18, 2020, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr delivered the 5-4 opinion in Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of Univ. of California,  holding that DHS’s decision to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA, was arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act. Jennifer J. Lee Associate Clinical Professor of Law For the over 600,000 DACA recipients across the country, the Supreme Court’s decision is essential in providing them with a temporary reprieve. While eventful, today’s decision solely ruled that the Trump administration’s rescission of the program was improper based on procedural grounds. The reality, therefore, is that any presidential administration in the future can wipe out the DACA program so long as it does so with proper procedure. For this reason, DACA recipients are continuing to fight for a more permanent pathway to citizenship. As DACA recipients have ample support, the challenge is not in getting such a law enacted. Rather, they want a “clean” law that does not otherwise include harsh enforcement provisions against the immigrants …

Moot Court Room Judges Bench

When Judges May Not Judge

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Perhaps it is not a startling position, but “when a judge earlier had significant, personal involvement as a prosecutor in a critical decision regarding the defendant’s case[,]” that judge must recuse himself or herself from judicial or appellate review. That principal is now enshrined not merely as one of professional conduct, but as a guarantee of Due Process. And this came about in a case with some Temple Law connections. The decision came on June 9 in a 5-3 ruling from the United States Supreme Court in a case from Pennsylvania. In Williams v. Pennsylvania, Terry Williams, a death row inmate, had won a last minute reprieve and the right to a new penalty trial when a Philadelphia Judge determined that “the trial prosecutor had suppressed material, exculpatory evidence…and engaged in ‘prosecutorial gamesmanship.’” When the prosecution appealed that ruling the case went to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, presided over by then-Chief Justice Ronald Castille. There was only one problem – the Chief Justice had been the District Attorney at the time of Williams’ original trial …

AUDIO: The Supreme Court’s Loaded Gun

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Professor Craig Green joins the Decode DC podcast to talk about the 1944 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Korematsu v. United States, which validated putting American citizens in internment camps during wartime, based on their race or ethnicity. The court has never overturned the Korematsu decision, and as the 2016 presidential election approaches, the debate over the case has new life. Listen to the Podcast

The Supreme Court of the United States

Justice Scalia’s Rule of Law Efforts

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Justice Scalia’s passing comes as a shock and is generating tributes across ideological lines. Indeed, whether you agreed with his opinions or not (and I was not a fan of his thinking on cases likeSosa or Bond), Justice Scalia’s opinions deserved to be read. Lines like “never-say-never jurisprudence” and “oh-so-close-to-relevant cases” are some of my personal favorites. Readers should feel free to add their own in the comment section. In the meantime, I wanted to pay tribute to a side of Justice Scalia that has garnered relatively little attention — his dedication to promoting the rule of law. For the last sixteen years, Temple Law has run a rule of law program in Beijing hosted at Tsinghua University’s School of Law. We offer an LLM to classes of 50 Chinese judges, prosecutors and lawyers, in an effort to acquaint them with the U.S. legal system and the rule of law more generally. As part of the program, the Chinese students visit Philadelphia for the summer, which includes a day trip to D.C. And nearly every year the highlight of that D.C. …