SCOTUS thread

[zoogs]

So, reading more of SCOTUSblog recently has been fascinating. A pair of 6-2 decisions came down today. One of the cases, described jovially here as 'technical', appears to have amounted to a titanic grammarian battle:

 

http://www.scotusblog.com/2016/03/opinion-analysis-battle-of-statutory-interpretation-canons-ends-in-defeat-for-convicted-sex-offender/

The technical dispute was about the meaning of 18 U.S.C. § 2252(b)(2), which subjects defendants convicted of possessing child pornography to a ten-year mandatory minimum sentence if they have a prior conviction . . . under the laws of any State relating to aggravated sexual abuse, sexual abuse, or abusive sexual conduct involving a minor or ward.

The federal government made a scintillating case for The Rule of Last Antecedent -- 'A, B, or [C with D]' ...

 

...while the plaintiffs equally vouched for The Rule of Series Qualifier -- '[A, B, or C] with D'.

 

That's vexing indeed, and produced this sharp disagreement between justices Sotomayor and Kagan, expressed, naturally, in dueling baseball metaphors:

 

Sotomayor: "Imagine you are the general manager of the Yankees and you are rounding out your 2016 roster.

 

You tell your scouts to find a defensive catcher, a quick-footed shortstop, or a pitcher from last years World Champion Kansas City Royals. It would be natural for your scouts to confine their search for a pitcher to last years championship team, but to look more broadly for catchers and shortstops."

 

Kagan: If your instruction as a scout was to find “a catcher, shortstop, or pitcher from the Kansas City Royals,” she wrote in her dissent (which was joined by Justice Stephen Breyer), surely you wouldn’t come back with a catcher or a shortstop from another team. Whomever you came back with, he would be from the Royals. The qualifier “Royals” obviously applies to everything in the list.

That's underrepresenting the case, probably, but that was the amusing part of it. There's a good question raised about 'rule of lenity' here which I suppose I'll let more lawyerly types comment about, if we have any.

 

I'm glad I looked up the SCOTUSblog treatment for this. I read another article about these decisions that gave case background and then one of Kagan's analogies without context and I was very confused by it

[zoogs]

A blog post on the ongoing Zubik v Burwell:

 

http://blogs.harvard.edu/billofhealth/2016/03/16/zubik-v-burwell-part-1-why-paperwork-does-not-burden-religious-exercise/

 

 

 

These objections to seeking a religious exemption from a regulatory requirement are so unprecedented that one is tempted to question whether these claims are motivated by something other than sincere religious objections to filling out a form.

[Archy1221]

I didn’t really see this reversal coming so soon.