GRIMM NOT READY TO GIVE UP | The Landmark Decision You Might Have Missed | Harvard Law? What, Like It’s Hard?
March 7, 2017
TODAY IN HISTORY
|On this day in 1994, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that a parody that pokes fun at an original work can be considered “fair use.”
A SUPREME APOLOGY
|“The family of the chief justice who presided over the Supreme Court 160 years ago apologized yesterday to the family of a slave who tried to sue for his freedom. Charles Taney IV on Monday apologized for the words written by his great-great-grand-uncle ROGER BROOKE TANEY in the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision. Roger Taney wrote that African Americans could not have rights of their own and were inferior to white people.”
AIN'T OVER YET
|The Supreme Court decided yesterday to pass for now on hearing arguments in what might be a landmark case concerning the rights of transgender students. Even so, GAVIN GRIMM—the teenager who has been fighting to be able to use the school bathrooms that match his gender identity—isn’t ready to give up just yet. “I’m in it for the long haul,” he said. “If it takes 10 more years, I’m happy to be a part of it.”
ICYMI – A LANDMARK DECISION AT SCOTUS YESTERDAY
|SCOTUS ruled 5-3 yesterday that a constitutional exception to the rule of keeping jury deliberations secret is appropriate when there is evidence that a juror exhibited racial bias in voting to convict a defendant. Cristian Farias with The Huffington Post reports on the ruling written by JUSTICE ANTHONY KENNEDY which Farias calls “highly readable” and “replete with the kind of language Kennedy reserves for landmark rulings.”
HANDS OFF, PAL
|Right now, the police can legally take your stuff even if you haven’t committed a crime — through what’s widely known as “civil asset forfeiture.” But yesterday, JUSTICE CLARENCE THOMAS indicated that he is very skeptical of this practice’s constitutionality in his opinion for the case of Leonard v. Texas.
WHAT? LIKE IT'S HARD?
|The family of JUSTICE ANTONIN SCALIA has decided to donate his legal and academic papers to Harvard Law School, giving HLS the unique challenge of having to preserve the late justice’s paper and digital documents. The papers mostly come from Scalia’s time on the United States Supreme Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
OTHER NEWS
Courts Will Define Boundaries of Friendship in Insider Trading
The New York TimesThe Supreme Court’s ruling in Salman v. United States left outstanding the question of how close is too close. In other words, how close does a friendship need to be in order to show a gift of inside information?
My opposition to Neil Gorsuch is personal
The Washington Post“My problem with the nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the U.S. Supreme Court is not political. It’s personal. It’s about my father and mother. And it’s about one of our most sacred rights as human beings.”
Liberals threaten to primary over Gorsuch
The Hill“Left-leaning groups are sending a stern message to Democrats who consider backing President Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court: Do it and risk a primary challenge in 2018.”