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High court avoids dispute over highway crosses
Top Court Watch |
2011/11/01 08:39
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The Supreme Court won't hear an appeal of a ruling that 12-foot-high crosses along Utah highways in honor of dead state troopers violate the Constitution.
The justices voted 8-1 Monday to reject an appeal from Utah and a state troopers' group that wanted the court to throw out the ruling and take a more permissive view of religious symbols on public land.
Since 1998, the private Utah Highway Patrol Association has paid for and erected more than a dozen memorial crosses, most of them on state land. Texas-based American Atheists Inc. and three of its Utah members sued the state in 2005.
The federal appeals court in Denver said the crosses were an unconstitutional endorsement of Christianity by the Utah state government.
Justice Clarence Thomas issued a 19-page opinion dissenting from Monday's order. Thomas said the case offered the court the opportunity to clear up confusion over its approach to disputes over the First Amendment's Establishment Clause, the prohibition against governmental endorsement of religion. |
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High court reinstates 'shaken baby' conviction
Law & Court News |
2011/10/31 08:38
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The Supreme Court has again reinstated the conviction of a California woman for shaking her 7-week-old grandson to death, a final ruling that ends a protracted dispute with the federal appeals court in San Francisco.
The justices voted 6-3 Monday to reverse the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' ruling in favor of Shirley Ree Smith. The appeals court had three times set aside Smith's conviction, saying the case likely was a miscarriage of justice. The appeals court said there was no demonstrable support for the prosecution's theory of the case.
But the high court said that even though doubts about Smith's guilt are understandable, the appeals court should have deferred to state courts that upheld Smith's conviction.
Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor dissented.
Ginsburg, writing for the dissenters, said the court should have passed up the chance to teach the 9th Circuit a lesson in a tragic case.
What is now known about shaken baby syndrome casts grave doubt on the charge leveled against Smith; and uncontradicted evidence shows that she poses no danger whatever to her family or anyone else in society, Ginsburg said. |
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Chavez orders more land taken from British firm
Topics in Legal News |
2011/10/30 08:38
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Venezuela's president on Sunday ordered the expropriation of 716,590 acres belonging to a British-owned company amid a disagreement over compensation for earlier takeovers of ranchland from the firm.
President Hugo Chavez announced the latest seizure after saying that Venezuela refuses to pay compensation in foreign currency to Agropecuaria Flora, a local subsidiary of the British company Vestey Group.
Chavez said the government had received a demand from the company that it be paid in dollars for the previous seizure of tens of thousands of acres. But the government insists in paying in bolivars, Venezuela's currency.
It's difficult for foreign companies operating in Venezuela to repatriate profits and other income in bolivars due to foreign currency controls in the South American country.
Representatives of Agropecuaria Flora did not answer telephone calls seeking comment Sunday.
Venezuela's expropriation of farm and ranch lands began in earnest in 2005, with the government employing a 2001 law allowing it to seize lands deemed idle or not adequately used. |
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Alabama immigration fight recalls civil rights era
Law & Court News |
2011/10/30 08:38
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The epicenter of the fight over the patchwork of immigration laws in the United States is not Arizona, which shares a border with Mexico and became a common site for boycotts. Nor was it any of the four states that were next to pass their own crackdowns.
No, the case that's likely to be the first sorted out by the U.S. Supreme Court comes from the Deep South state of Alabama, where the nation's strictest immigration law has resurrected ugly images from the state's days as the nation's battleground for civil rights a half-century ago.
And Alabama's jump to the forefront says as much about the country's evolving demographics as it does the nation's collective memory of the state's sometimes violent path to desegregation.
With the failure of Congress in recent years to pass comprehensive federal immigration legislation, Arizona, Georgia, Utah, South Carolina and Indiana have passed their own. But supporters and opponents alike agree none contained provisions as strict as those passed in Alabama, among them one that required schools to check students' immigration status. That provision, which has been temporarily blocked, would allow the Supreme Court to reconsider a decision that said a kindergarten to high school education must be provided to illegal immigrants. |
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Court sidesteps Connecticut student speech case
Law & Court News |
2011/10/28 08:39
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The Supreme Court is refusing to disturb a court ruling that Connecticut school officials acted reasonably in disciplining a student for an Internet posting she wrote outside of school.
The justices on Monday turned down an appeal from Avery Doninger, who was a high school junior in Burlington, Conn., when she took to the Internet to criticize administrators for canceling a popular school activity.
Doninger sued school officials after they punished her by preventing her from serving as class secretary as a senior.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York sided with the school officials. |
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