JUSTICES NARROW PROPERTY OWNERS’ RIGHTS | Feldman Calls SCOTUS Ruling ‘A Win For Liars’ | OT16 To Wrap Monday

June 23, 2017

The Supreme Court this morning decided to narrow the rights of property owners in disputes with the government. The justices ruled 5-3 to uphold the use of zoning regulations by the state of Wisconsin to prevent members of the Murr family from selling the lot because the family also owned an adjoining parcel of land.

SCOTUS yesterday made it harder to strip citizenship from naturalized Americans. The high court’s unanimous ruling in Maslenjuk v. United States found that false statements made during the naturalization process had to be relevant to gaining citizenship in order to justify revoking it later.

Noah Feldman writing for Bloomberg View opines that the Supreme Court’s decision yesterday regarding the preservation of citizenship “irresistibly combines two of the most contentious issues in the age of Donald Trump: the culture of falsehood and the hot-button problem of immigration.”

Yesterday, the justices ruled to uphold convictions in a decades-old murder case, noting that even though prosecutors withheld evidence that was favorable to the defense, the defendants failed to show it would have changed the outcome. The justices ruled 6-2, with JUSTICES ELENA KAGAN and RUTH BADER GINSBURG dissenting. Kagan wrote, “With the undisclosed evidence, the whole tenor of the trial would have changed. Rather than relying on a ‘not me, maybe them’ defense … all the defendants would have relentlessly impeached the Government’s (thoroughly impeachable) witnesses and offered the jurors a way to view the crime in a different light. In my view, that could well have flipped one or more jurors—which is all Brady requires.”

Richard Wolf with USA Today tweeted this morning, @richardwolf: “Chief Justice Roberts confirms: Supreme Court will wrap up 2016 term Monday. Six decisions to come; some likely tied/reheard in fall #SCOTUS”