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In an amicus brief filed with the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday, the ABA says: “Imposing governmental attorneys’ fees on patent applicants who choose civil actions under [the law] will hamper equal access to justice and chill the assertion of meritorious claims.” The Supreme Court is considering in Peter v. NantKwest Inc. whether the phrase “all the expenses of the proceedings” in a provision of U.S. patent law includes expenses incurred by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office when its attorneys defend the office in litigation

Louisiana’s aberrant take on the right to a jury trial in America will itself go on trial Monday, as the U.S. Supreme Court takes up a challenge to the non-unanimous verdict law that state voters just ditched, but only going forward. On the opening day of the court’s new term, the justices are set to take up the case of Evangelisto Ramos, an oil-supply boat worker who was convicted of second-degree murder in the killing of 43-year-old Trenice Fedison in New Orleans.

James Kraig Kahler intentionally shot and killed his wife, their two teenage daughters and Mrs. Kahler’s grandmother in 2009. Now he’s going to the Supreme Court. At his Kansas trial, the defense psychiatrist testified that Mr. Kahler had lost touch with reality due to a serious mental disorder. But the defendant couldn’t offer an insanity defense, because Kansas passed a law abolishing it in 1995. Some form of an insanity defense has been part of English law since the late Middle Ages.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday agreed to take up a major abortion case that could lead to new curbs on access to the procedure as it considers the legality of a Republican-backed Louisiana law that imposes restrictions on abortion doctors.

The Supreme Court of the United States announced Friday that it would take up its first abortion case since Justice Brett Kavanaugh was added to the bench. According to a court order, the Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case of June Medical Services v. Gee, which comes out of Louisiana and deals with a state requirement that abortion providers have admitting privileges to a hospital within 30 miles. Proponents of the admitting privileges requirement say that the measure is a safety precaution for women undergoing the procedures. “Abortion activists are more than willing to lower the bar on...

While I don’t know them personally, I can’t help but feel empathy for Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s two young daughters, Margaret and Liza. I’m sure it’s hard for them to understand why anyone would attempt to humiliate someone they know is a wonderful man, all based on something even the attackers know is a lie. I suspect that, like me, Margaret and Liza never thought they would have a famous father, or that anything so terrible could happen to him as it has to all three of us. My father certainly wasn’t famous when I was growing up, but he is...

Controversy is following Ángel Cabrera, former president of George Mason University, as he takes the helm at Georgia Institute of Technology. The reason? His support of the hiring of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh at GMU as a visiting law professor. The GT for Survivors group has been vocal against Carbera’s hire for months, but the recently revived allegations against Kavanaugh highlighted in a new book prompted its members to reignite their agitation, despite the fact that the claims have been denied by Kavanaugh’s alleged victim. “Students at GT and GMU don’t think Kavanaugh’s elevation to SCOTUS means that the...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - With 86-year-old liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg enduring a series of health scares, the question of whether President Donald Trump will get to make yet another U.S. Supreme Court appointment before the 2020 election lingers as the nine justices prepare to begin their new term next week.

I’m not a very demonstrative person. Still, I laughed right out loud when I read the excuse House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY) had for not pursuing the impeachment against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. I scared my dog, Molly, even. “We have our hands full with impeaching the president right now and that’s going to take up our limited resources and time for a while,” Nadler told NBC News. We can’t tilt at that windmill, Nadler is telling his fellow Democrats, because we’re already tilting at this one over here. Republicans ought to welcome impeachment for Kavanaugh, scurrilous...

Donald Trump is waging a nonstop, all-encompassing war against progressive culture, in magnitude analogous to what 19th-century Germans once called a Kulturkampf. As a result, not even former President George W. Bush has incurred the degree of hatred from the left that is now directed at Trump. For most of his time in office, Trump, his family, his friends and his businesses have been investigated, probed, dissected and constantly attacked.

In an attempt to smear Attorney General William Barr, NBC News framed a story about Barr’s support for due process (which shouldn’t be controversial) as him supporting rapists. It’s a typical tactic by the media these days. Ever since the Obama administration issued guidelines in 2011 warning schools that they needed to find more male students responsible for sexual assault, due process has gone out the window. In 2017, professor K.C. Johnson and scholar Stuart Taylor wrote a book about the issue. At the time, I wrote a review for RealClear Books — and my previous work on the subject...

Her writings on faith and jurisprudence should worry conservatives. The left is engaged in full-on panic over control of the U.S. Supreme Court—which Justice Scalia once described as having become a de facto sitting Constitutional Convention, subjecting every law in every state to the views of five lifetime appointees: an oligarchy of lawyers from Harvard, Stanford, and Yale. As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s health concerns continue to loom, liberals are trying to spook Speaker Mitch McConnell into swearing off confirmation hearings for any Trump appointee during an election year. At the same time, The New York Times and The New...

The latest smear on Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh is a disaster for Democrats, and everyone seems to know it except the party’s presidential candidates. No sooner had the New York Times published a new, unsubstantiated allegation of sexual misconduct by Kavanaugh, then most of the candidates demanded Kavanaugh’s impeachment. “These newest revelations are disturbing,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) wrote on Twitter, adding “Like the man who appointed him, Kavanaugh should be impeached.” Sen. Kamala Harris (D., Calif.) declared Kavanaugh’s “place on the Court is an insult to the pursuit of truth and justice. He must be impeached.” Sen....

Eight months into their control of the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) hasn't missed many opportunities to draw a stark contrast between the two parties' policies. From defending infanticide and trying to gut the Religious Freedom Restoration Act to the job-killing New Green Deal, hardly a day passes that the Left's radicalism isn't on display. But yesterday, liberals took their extremism to new heights -- demanding a tax on Bible-believing Americans. Thursday's hearing in the House Ways and Means Committee wasn't the first time liberals have tried to use the IRS to do their dirty work -- but it might...

Just when it seems that the quality of the Democratic candidates and the ethical standards of the Democratic media might start to rebound to normal civilized levels (not a high bar since the days of JFK, LBJ, and Hubert Humphrey), they excavate new depths of inanity and unprofessionalism. I believe that the latest outburst against Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh will be seen as a significant milestone in the slide to perdition of the Democratic presidential nominating process and of that party’s lock-step media accomplices. The New York Times produced an allegation that Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted a woman 30 years...

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is walking the walk and talking the talk ... showing everyone she's in the game of life. RBG got a little help from security but also walked without assistance Thursday in NYC as she entered the 92nd Street Y cultural center. She spoke to the crowd -- something she's been doing with some frequency after her 4th bout with cancer. The night before, Ginsburg spoke at the Yale Club and told the crowd, "This latest has been my fourth cancer battle and I found each time that when I'm active I'm much better than...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - With new abortion cases on a fast track to the U.S. Supreme Court, the nine justices will get an opportunity within weeks to take up legal fights over Republican-backed laws that could lead to rulings curbing a woman’s ability to obtain the procedure. The big question is not so much whether the court, with its 5-4 conservative majority that includes two justices appointed by President Donald Trump, will take up an appeal that could permit new restrictions on abortion rights, but when it will do so, according to legal experts. The court’s new nine-month term starts on...

Antonin Scalia pointed out that the Bill of Rights was not enacted to change anyone’s rights. At all. The Bill of Rights was created not to change anyone's rights but to set in concrete the already established rights of the people. That is explicitly the burden of the Ninth Amendment: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. And where the First Amendment refers to “the” freedom . . . of the press, it explicitly means that freedom of the press as it existed in 1787...

Joe Scarborough still occasionally claims to be a conservative. But based on his rant this morning, it sure sounds like Joe would prefer Supreme Court appointees in the mold of RBG/Sotomayor rather than Gorsuch/Kavanaugh.On today's Morning Joe, Scarborough fretted that if President Trump and Mitch McConnell are successful, they will "shape the judiciary for the next 50 years." Scarborough expressed his concern in the context of criticizing Joe Kennedy for launching a Dem primary campaign against incumbent Sen. Ed Markey in Massachusetts. Scarborough worried that money spent on that campaign will divert funds that could be used to defeat President...

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) called for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh to be impeached on Sunday after the New York Times ran a piece Saturday alleging that an eyewitness saw friends of Kavanaugh push “his penis into the hand of” a female student at a college party. The Times later added to its piece on Sunday evening that the female student did not recall the incident, according to friends, and declined to comment: