Free Republic

Although rare, 4-4 ties are hardly unheard-of—justices do recuse themselves from time to time. A split decision effectively upholds the ruling of the lower court (presumably a state supreme court). In the event of such a tie, the court typically issues what's known as a per curiam decision. The opinion in such a decision is issued under the court's name, as opposed to consisting of a majority and a minority opinion. Justices, however, may attach dissenting opinions to the per curiam decision if they like—as happened in Bush v. Gore. When a 4-4 deadlock does occur, the case is not...

Last summer, we noted a crazy case in which the famous Hollywood actor James Woods sued a random Twitter troll who had been making fun of Woods. The anonymous troll.., mocked some of Woods' own nonsensical tweets about Caitlyn Jenner and Planned Parenthood by saying: "@RealJamesWoods @benshapiro cocaine addict James Woods still sniffing and spouting." -- Abe List (@abelist) July 15, 2015 Then, earlier this month, there was a hearing, and LA Superior Court judge Mel Recana, appeared to side with Abe List, issuing a 10-page tentative ruling dismissing the case. In that tentative ruling, Judge Recana noted: The court...

**SNIP** Jackson, a 36-year-old from Dallas, was ultimately arrested and charged with property theft, a Class B misdemeanor - because he had taken his daughter's iPhone and refused to give it back. Following a long legal battle, a Dallas County Criminal Court judge ruled last week that the state did not have enough evidence to continue the case and ordered a jury to find him not guilty. Jackson spoke with The Washington Post at length following the verdict but then recanted, saying he had signed an exclusivity agreement with a TV program a day earlier. He said he could not...

A district judge in Columbia County wants people to stop wearing pajama bottoms when showing up to court. In order to remind people not to wear the bottoms, he even put up a sign in the lobby of his courtroom. Magisterial District Judge Craig Long told us he's seen more and more people come into his courtroom dressed in pajama bottoms. He doesn't think that kind of attire is appropriate and hopes the new sign in his office will get people to think twice before wearing pajamas in the courtroom.

A hunger-striking Palestinian security prisoner is to remain in Israeli jail despite warnings over his deteriorating health, the country's top court ruled Wednesday. The Supreme Court said it would not release Mohammed al-Qiq immediately but would follow his health on a daily basis. Qiq has been on hunger strike for 63 days over his detention under Israel's administrative detention law and his organs are at risk of failure any day, his legal team claims. The European Union on Wednesday said it was "especially concerned" about his deteriorating health. His lawyer Jawad Boulus asked the Supreme Court to release him but...

Liberals won't like it. If Ted Cruz is elected president, he has big plans for the Supreme Court -- namely, picking extremely conservative candidates to fill any vacancies among the nine justices. In an interview with Bloomberg, the Senator and former solicitor general from Texas said that Republicans are generally bad at picking nominees for the high court, and that he'd be different. "Unlike many of the other candidates, I will be willing to spend the capital to ensure that every Supreme Court nominee that I put on the court is a principled judicial conservative," Cruz said. As solicitor general,...

Coming up during the next administration will be 3 or possibly 4 openings to fill vacancies on the Supreme Court. If you elect, as president, someone who will appoint activist judges, who will tend to have a "progressive" interpretation of the Constitution, then you can expect to see a wholesale change to our society as we know it. -snip- If the Democrats retain the White House, you can expect potential nominees to make decisions, if confirmed, who will promote the far-left agenda as personified by the four liberal judges now sitting on the Supreme Court (i.e. Kagan, Breyer, Sotomayor, and...

A group of California teachers fighting mandatory union fees at the U.S. Supreme Court had, by all appearances, a good day Monday. Supreme Court justices seemed receptive to the arguments brought by teachers in the Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association case. If the case is successful, Rebecca Friedrichs and other government workers across the nation will gain the ability to opt out of agency fees unions charge to nonmembers. Remarks from several of the justices indicated they agree with Friedrichs on a central point, that public sector union negotiations are inherently political because they involve taxpayer money, public employees, and...

The U.S. Supreme Court hears oral arguments today on a case that could end mandatory union dues and fees for public sector workers, which are currently required in about half the states in the country. The case is Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, and involves whether requiring teachers and other government employees to pay union dues or fees violates their right to free speech. Rebecca Friedrichs and her fellow plaintiffs are California teachers who have been forced by law to pay a union as a condition of their employment in a public school. Attorneys for the plaintiffs are expected to...

The U.S. Senate has confirmed Wilhelmina Wright as Minnesota’s newest federal judge. Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken announced Wright’s confirmation Tuesday. President Barack Obama nominated Wright for a U.S. District Court opening in Minnesota last April. Klobuchar and Franken formed a bipartisan advisory committee to help them recommend a candidate. The Minnesota Democrats note that the Senate confirmed only 10 federal district court judges in 2015.

An elder-care charity run by nuns asked the Supreme Court on Monday to shield them from Obamacare’s birth control mandate, arguing that the government can provide their organizations’ female employees with contraceptives if it really wants to but shouldn’t force them to facilitate the coverage. Attorneys for the Little Sisters of the Poor and three Christian colleges say the administration already has exempted a series of employers, undercutting its push to force religiously affiliated groups to formally opt out of the regulations so that a third party can step in and pay for the drugs and services. “It is

WASHINGTON - The Louisiana Supreme Court Friday (May 1) permanently barred former Rep. William Jefferson from practicing law. Jefferson, 68, a Democrat who represented New Orleans in Congress for 12 terms, is serving a 13-year prison sentence in Oakdale for corruption and not scheduled for release until August, 30, 2023, when he would be 76 years old. The Louisiana Supreme Court said in its ruling that it agreed with the unanimous finding of the Louisiana Attorney Disciplinary Board that the conduct of the Harvard-educated lawyer is so egregious that he should not be allowed to return to the practice of...

Lod District Court ordered the suspect, whose identity remains under a media gag order, to be released to a 10-day house arrest. After being held for 29 days - during the first 20 of which he was denied legal consultation - police asked to extend his arrest based on alleged involvement in an unrelated quarrel with Bedouin shepherds two years ago, in a request thrown out by the court. However, the Honenu legal aid organization representing the suspects reported the IPS was refusing the order to release him, as State Attorney Shai Nitzan had a request issued to have the...

After a landlord was convicted of pushing her Muslim tenant down a flight of stairs, a judge ordered her to respect the rights of all Muslims and to take an introductory course on Islam. Now the highest court in Massachusetts is being asked to decide whether the judge violated the landlord's constitutional rights. The Supreme Judicial Court will hear arguments next month in a case that poses interesting legal questions at a time when the country is grappling with anti-Muslim backlash following deadly attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California, both allegedly carried out by radical Muslims. The case centers...

A judge in a British Sharia court told a married couple the wife must divorce the husband, have sex with a different man and wait three menstrual cycles before marrying the husband again in order to validate the marriage, it has been claimed.In her report on the growing number of Sharia courts in the UK, Dutch academic Machteld Zee, says judges are enforcing harsh rules on women who want to divorce abusive and neglectful husbands, and accuses them of allowing fundamentalists to enforce their ideology.Breitbart London wrote about her initial findings earlier this month, but now new detail has come...

Don't tell anybody what I want to do. If they find out you know that they'll never let me through Much to the surprise of a president who is used to doing whatever he wants, regardless of what the Constitution says about limits on his authority, the judiciary actually did its job yesterday by putting a stop to Obama’s executive order granting blanket amnesty to entire classes of illegal aliens. Obama now has only one option left, and that’s an appeal to the Supreme Court. Actually he does have another option, and it might be one he finds attractive -...

Full title: How to steal $75,000 from the poor in one Day's work - traffic court is a tax collection scheme masked as justice The new liberality concerning marijuana possession in the United States is long overdue, but let’s not exaggerate how much progress we’ve made. Users might not be ending up in jail as frequently as they did 10 years ago. But cops, judges, and courts still exercise arbitrary power to ruin people’s lives, and they continue to do so at astonishing rates, all over the country. I recently saw this firsthand. I sat in a municipal traffic court...

Imagine that your family or business suffers a loss due to some error or misdeed by a state agency. You go to the risk and expense of suing the agency, win the case, and the judge orders the state to pay not just the damages, but also the legal costs and fees you incurred. At that point you can, as the winning plaintiff collect a check and move on, right? Not quite, at least when it comes to collecting the “costs and fees” part of the judgment. Under current law, the state makes you jump through one more hoop: As...

A New York court recently ruled that a Long Island woman who killed her baby in a car accident cannot be convicted because her baby was not a person yet. The Times Union reports Jennifer Jorgensen previously was found guilty of second-degree manslaughter for causing the death of her baby daughter in a car crash. She also was indicted for driving under the influence of drugs and alcohol and endangering the welfare of a child, according to the report. Jorgensen was in her third trimester when the car accident occurred in May 2008. Her daughter was delivered by C-section after...

The U.S. Supreme Court appears on track to revisit the constitutionality of the death penalty, with recent remarks from justices and world leaders sparking fresh optimism from opponents of capital punishment. The high court under Chief Justice John Roberts has in recent terms agreed to rule on cases related to how states handle death penalty prosecutions and conduct executions, but has yet to weigh in on whether the practice violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.  Some court watchers say that will soon change, pointing to signals suggesting an appetite among some of the justices to...