// BEGIN editorial data var i = 0; var Pol_SCOTUS_2007_2008_Cases = new Array(); Pol_SCOTUS_2007_2008_Cases.ID = "Pol_SCOTUS_2007_2008_Cases"; Pol_SCOTUS_2007_2008_Cases.ID_WB = 24556221; Pol_SCOTUS_2007_2008_Cases.sPubDate = "7/1/2008 12:41:00 PM GMT"; Pol_SCOTUS_2007_2008_Cases.navsectionID = "3032071" Pol_SCOTUS_2007_2008_Cases.appFmt = 2; Pol_SCOTUS_2007_2008_Cases.itemsPerPage = 1; Pol_SCOTUS_2007_2008_Cases.appWidth = 460; Pol_SCOTUS_2007_2008_Cases.appHeader = "fact file|Notable Supreme Court cases - 2007 to 2008"; Pol_SCOTUS_2007_2008_Cases.appDeck = "Pete Williams looks at key cases before the nation's highest court"; Pol_SCOTUS_2007_2008_Cases.appFooter = "Source: NBC's Pete Williams"; Pol_SCOTUS_2007_2008_Cases.appNavStyle = 3; Pol_SCOTUS_2007_2008_Cases.bDhtml = 0; Pol_SCOTUS_2007_2008_Cases.appLayout = 3; Pol_SCOTUS_2007_2008_Cases.copyHeight = 200; Pol_SCOTUS_2007_2008_Cases.copyWidth = 340; Pol_SCOTUS_2007_2008_Cases.copyMargin = 9; Pol_SCOTUS_2007_2008_Cases[i++] = new Array("","Introduction","NBC's Pete Williams","http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Bylines/mugs/NBC%20News/nbc_williams_pete.htease.jpg","","", "", "", "", "", "right", "", "", "97", "148", "", "", "", "", ""); Pol_SCOTUS_2007_2008_Cases[i-1].body = "
The Supreme Court's 2007-2008 session included a number of important issues. Click one of the cases on the left for more details on some of this term’s key cases."; Pol_SCOTUS_2007_2008_Cases[i++] = new Array("","Right to bear arms","Video: Court ruling marks major gun rights victory","http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Video/_NEW/nn_pwilliams_guncontrol2_080626.htease.jpg","","", "v", "", "9386a4c9-76c2-4ca1-9ced-ba11da02e973|", "", "right", "", "", "110", "147", "#000000", "", "", "", ""); Pol_SCOTUS_2007_2008_Cases[i-1].body = "
Case: District of Columbia v Heller, 07-290
Issue: The meaning of the Second Amendment's \"right to bear arms\"
Status: Decided June 26, 2008
Read the briefs (.pdf)
Read the argument transcript (.pdf)
Details: In a 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court said the Constitution's Second Amendments gives Americans have a right to own guns for self-defense, striking down the District of Columbia's 32-year-old ban on keeping a gun at home.
Never before in the history of the United States had the Supreme Court said what the Second Amendment meant. Just 27 words long, interrupted three times by the punctuation fashionable at the time of the nation's founding, it says, \"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.\"
To Dick Heller of Washington, DC, who was turned down when he sought permission to keep a handgun at home for personal protection, the words guaranteed a personal, individual right to own a gun. His lawyers argued that the key phrase is \"the right of the people to keep and bear Arms.\" The amendment's first words, dealing with a well regulated militia, spell out only one of many purposes for establishing that right, they argue, and do not limit its protections.
But the city of Washington defended its handgun ban, the strictest gun control law in the nation. The city argued that the first part of the amendment states the founders' only purpose, to protect the states from having their militias disarmed by a hostile and distant federal government. The city maintains that it did not violate the Constitution when it banned handguns in 1976, after concluding that existing laws did not adequately reduce gun violence.
The legal showdown generated intense interest. From Congress, 229 Republicans and 66 Democrats filed a brief supporting Heller. Vice President Dick Cheney took the highly unusual step of signing on in his capacity as President of the Senate. That put him at odds with the Bush Administration's formal position filed by the Justice Department, which argued that the amendment provides an individual right. But the government claimed that the appeals court ruling is so sweeping that, if upheld, it could jeopardize federal gun laws.
The court's landmark ruling said the right is not absolute and that restrictions can be placed on gun ownership, such as preventing felons and the mentally retarded from possessing firearms, setting up the next wave of lawsuits seeking to define which other restrictions will be permitted and which will be found to interfered with the Second Amendment right."; Pol_SCOTUS_2007_2008_Cases[i++] = new Array("","Death penalty for child rape","Video: SCOTUS strikes down death penalty for child rape","http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Video/080625/nn_pwilliams_scotus_080625.htease.jpg","","", "v", "", "271d7f77-8f17-4db1-9d39-9260b8f56340|", "", "right", "", "", "110", "147", "#000000", "", "", "", ""); Pol_SCOTUS_2007_2008_Cases[i-1].body = "
Case: Kennedy v Louisiana
Issue: Constitutionality of imposing the death sentence for raping a child
Status: Decided June 25, 2008
Read the ruling (.pdf)
Read the argument transcript (.pdf)
Details: By a 5-4 vote, the court held that a state law allowing the death penalty to be imposed in cases of child rape violates the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
Louisiana's death row houses the only two inmates in the nation who face execution for an offense that did not involve murder -- the crime of raping a child. One of them, Patrick Kennedy of Jefferson Parish, was convicted of raping his eight-year-old stepdaughter. But his legal supporters argue that as serious as the crime is, the death penalty sends the wrong signal.
Said David Bruck, a death penalty opponent, \"To give the message that a child who has experienced a rape is as good as dead, which is really the message of the death penalty for child rape, is a cruel thing to say.\"
The Supreme Court banned capital punishment for raping an adult 31 years ago. Kennedy's case asked the court to decide if it is unconstitutional when the victim is a child.
Five other states -- Georgia, Texas, South Carolina, Oklahoma, and Montana -- allowed the death penalty for child rape, but only for repeat sexual offenders. But some states say support for the death penalty in such cases is growing because of better understanding of the harm to children.
\"It affects the child's mind and heart in a way that I think that in past years we didn't fully appreciate,\" says Ted Cruz, who serves as solicitor general for Texas.
No one has been executed for raping a child since 1964. a sign the court said, that national opinion opposes executing child rapists."; Pol_SCOTUS_2007_2008_Cases[i++] = new Array("","Exxon Valdez oil spill","Video: High court hears Exxon Valdez case","http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Video/080227/nn_pwilliams_exxonvaldez_080227.htease.jpg","","", "", "", "", "", "right", "", "", "110", "147", "#000000", "", "", "", ""); Pol_SCOTUS_2007_2008_Cases[i-1].body = "
Case: Exxon Shipping v Baker, 07-219
Issue: Damages to be paid for the huge oil spill off the coast of Alaska when an Exxon supertanker went aground in 1989
Status: Decided June 25, 2008
Read the ruling (.pdf)
Read the briefs (.pdf)
Read the argument transcript (.pdf)
Details: The Supreme Court cut the $2.5 billion punitive damages award in the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster to just over $500 million. The court ruled that victims of the worst oil spill in U.S. history may collect punitive damages from Exxon Mobil Corp., but not as much as a federal appeals court determined. Justice David Souter wrote for the court that, under traditions of the law of the sea, punitive damages may not exceed what the company already paid to compensate victims for economic losses, about $500 million.
Everything about this case was supersized -- the worst oil spill in U.S. history, with 11 million gallons fouling Alaska's coastal waters, fish, and wildlife, and the biggest damage award ever imposed to punish corporate misconduct, $2.5 billion.
Alaska residents claimed the captain of the Exxon Valdez, Joseph Hazelwood, was drunk when the ship ran aground. Not only that, said Jeffrey Fisher, the lawyer for the Alaskans, \"Upper management was a aware over a three-year span that Captain Hazelwood was drinking and driving supertankers in Prince William Sound.\"
Exxon appealed to the Supreme Court, saying it has already paid $3.5 billion to compensate for the damage and that it should not also be punished for the actions of the ship's captain, a liability it said the courts have declined to impose for nearly two centuries.
But few of the justices seemed to agree. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg called it an exaggeration to claim that the issue of liability for a ship captain's conduct is a settled one. And Justice David Souter said while there was a time when a ship was a floating world by itself, beyond control of its owner, that is certainly not the case today."; Pol_SCOTUS_2007_2008_Cases[i++] = new Array("","Guantanamo Bay detainee rights","Video: Supreme Court rules detainees have rights","http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Video/080612/n_pwilliams_scotus_gitmo_080612.htease.jpg","","", "", "", "03f97371-aeb7-4410-8db7-e1e7fa213d60|", "", "right", "", "", "110", "147", "#000000", "", "", "", ""); Pol_SCOTUS_2007_2008_Cases[i-1].body = "
Case: Boumediene v Bush, 06-1185 and Al Odah v US, 06-1196
Issue: Legal rights of detainees at Guantanamo Bay
Status: Decided June 12, 2008
Read the ruling (.pdf)
Read the argument transcript (.pdf)
Details: By a vote of 5-4, the Supreme Court ruled foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay have a constitutional right to challenge their detention in U.S. civilian courts. For the first time in history, the Supreme Court ruled that constitutional rights apply, even outside the U-S, to foreign citizens held by the American military.
Writing for the court's five more liberal members, Justice Anthony Kennedy said the Constitution is designed to remain in force in extraordinary times, including the right to be free from arbitrary and unlawful restraint, something many of the detainees have been without for as long as six years.
And because the ruling is based on the Constitution, Congress cannot take detainee rights away simply by passing a law, as it did two years ago:
For nearly six years, lawyers for the detainees held by the US at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had been trying to get their day in court. Many detainees insist they are wrongly held, turned in by greedy bounty hunters in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Lawyers for three dozen of them urged the Supreme Court to rule that they have a constitutional right to have their claims heard in a US courtroom.
In 2006, Congress passed a law forbidding federal courts to hear those claims, leaving the decisions instead to military tribunals. Congressional supporters of the law said civilian courts were not qualified to make decisions about military prisoners. Others worried that giving detainees a right of access to court would extend the right to sue to the battlefield."; Pol_SCOTUS_2007_2008_Cases[i++] = new Array("","Pandering child porn","","","","", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", ""); Pol_SCOTUS_2007_2008_Cases[i-1].body = "
Case: US v Williams, 06-694
Issue: Free speech and child pornography laws against \"pandering\"
Status: Decided May 19, 2008
Read the ruling (.pdf)
Read the argument transcript (.pdf)
Details: Congress has repeatedly struggled with how to curb pornography on the Internet without restricting free speech. The latest skirmish involved a 2003 law that prohibits \"pandering\" involving child pornography. The law makes it a crime to claim that a computer user has child pornography to offer, even when the material is not a sexually explicit depiction of an actual minor.
Opponents of the law said it sweeps too far, making a crime out of speech when no actual child pornography is involved. Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont said it \"criminalizes talking dirty over the Internet.\"
But defenders of the law, including the Justice Department, argued that such pandering contributes to the market for illegal material which involves the exploitation of children to produce.
In its decision, the court said federal law generally makes it a crime to sell or give away something that the holder of the material believes to be illegal, whether it really is or not. Material thought to be classified is one example. The court determined that the child porn \"pandering\" law was not overbroad and that it would not criminalize constitutionally protected speech. As for movies like \"Lolita\" or \"American Beauty,\" the court said, \"Simulated child pornography will be as available as ever, as long as it is offered and sought as such, and not as real child pornography.\""; Pol_SCOTUS_2007_2008_Cases[i++] = new Array("","Crack or powdered cocaine","Video: Supreme Court backs off on crack sentencing","http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Video/071210/nn_pwilliams_xtalk_071210.htease.jpg","","", "", "", "", "", "right", "", "", "110", "147", "#000000", "", "", "", ""); Pol_SCOTUS_2007_2008_Cases[i-1].body = "
Case: Kimbrough v US, 06-6330
Issue: Federal sentencing in cases involving crack or powder cocaine
Status: Decided Dec. 10, 2007
Read the ruling (.pdf)
Read the argument transcript (.pdf)
Details: Since 1986, a person convicted of possessing crack cocaine has received the same sentence as someone who had 100 times the amount in powder cocaine. The disparity hit African Americans especially hard: 85 percent of crack defendants are black.
The Supreme Court ruled that old assumptions about the danger of crack have been disproved, including those about how addictive it was and how much violence it caused. So the court gave judges the authority to impose lower sentences than called for by federal guidelines.
The ruling did not change minimum sentences set by federal law, which require at least five years in prison for possessing five grams of crack. The court's decision gave judges discretion to decide how much longer sentences should be in addition to the minimums. It was a surprisingly strong 7-2 vote, adding the court's voice to calls for doing away with the disparity between the law's treatment of violations involving crack and powder."; Pol_SCOTUS_2007_2008_Cases[i++] = new Array("","Flexible sentencing","","","","", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", ""); Pol_SCOTUS_2007_2008_Cases[i-1].body = "
Case: Gall v US, 06-6330
Issue: Flexibility of federal judges in sentencing
Status: Decided Dec. 10, 2007
Read the ruling (.pdf)
Read the argument transcript (.pdf)
Details: The court further unhitched federal judges from the once-mandatory federal sentencing guidelines. Following up on a 2005 decision that declared the guidelines \"advisory,\" the court ruled 7-2 that the guidelines were only one factor among many that judges may consider.
When Brian Gall was convicted for involvement in a drug distribution ring, the guidelines called for a sentence of 30 to 36 months in prison. Instead, the judge sentenced him to three years' probation. A federal appeals court, however, found that such a big departure from the guidelines required an extraordinary justification.
Not so, the Supreme Court ruled. Trial judges who impose sentence need not presume that the recommend guidelines range is reasonable, the decision said."; Pol_SCOTUS_2007_2008_Cases[i++] = new Array("","Investor fraud","","","","", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", ""); Pol_SCOTUS_2007_2008_Cases[i-1].body = "
Case: Stoneridge Investment v Scientific Atlanta, 06-43
Issue: Ability to sue companies that play a minor role in investor fraud
Status: Decided Jan. 15, 2008
Read the ruling (.pdf)
Read the argument transcript (.pdf)
Details: In what one legal scholar called \"the Roe v Wade of securities law,\" the case tested a question hanging over Wall Street after the collapse of Enron -- can investors sue companies that did not directly mislead investors but were instead doing business with companies that did?
In a 5-3 ruling, the court said investors can sue only companies that issued misleading statements that were relied upon by buyers or sellers of stock. The ruling had the effect of undercutting a huge lawsuit against companies that did business with Enron.
Justice Stephen Breyer did not participate in the case, presumably because of a potential conflict involving his financial holdings."; Pol_SCOTUS_2007_2008_Cases[i++] = new Array("","Foreign nationals’ rights","","","","", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", ""); Pol_SCOTUS_2007_2008_Cases[i-1].body = "
Case: Medellin v Texas, 06-984
Issue: States' rights and duty to notify foreign nationals in jail of right to contact their embassies
Status: Decided March 25, 2008
Read the ruling (.pdf)
Read the argument transcript (.pdf)
Details: Under an international treaty, foreign citizens arrested in the US must be told that they have a right to contact their embassies or consulates. Texas failed to advise Mexican national Jose Medellin of that right before convicting him of murder and sentencing him to death, so Mexico sued the United States in an international court on behalf of Medellin and 50 other Mexicans sentenced to death in the US. The World Court held that the US violated the treaty.
Despite his loyalty to his home state of Texas, President Bush signed a statement providing that states must follow the World Court's holding. But Texas responded by saying it would not give effect to the treaty if that meant giving Medellin another chance in court, in violation of its own state laws.
The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in favor of Texas. The justices said the president had no authority to order states to comply with international treaties which were at variance with their own laws. To make a treaty binding law in the U.S., the court said, would require an act of Congress, not the mere stroke of a president's pen."; Pol_SCOTUS_2007_2008_Cases[i++] = new Array("","Method of execution","Video: High court upholds lethal injection method","http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Video/080416/nn_pwilliams_deathpenalty_080416.htease.jpg","","", "", "", "", "", "right", "", "", "110", "147", "#000000", "", "", "", ""); Pol_SCOTUS_2007_2008_Cases[i-1].body = "
Case: Baze v Rees, 07-5439
Issue: The method of execution used in nearly every state to carry out a sentence of death
Status: Decided April 16, 2008
Read the ruling (.pdf)
Read the argument transcript (.pdf)
Details: This Kentucky case was a challenge to the most widely used form of capital punishment -- lethal injection involving a sequence of three chemicals. Death penalty opponents hoped the case would bring an end to lethal injection and inspire more states, forced to come up with new methods of execution, to abandon capital punishment completely. Instead, by a 7 to 2 vote, the court upheld Kentucky's system, used in all but one of the 36 death penalty states.
Opponents had claimed that if the first of the three lethal injection chemicals was not properly administered, an inmate was left awake but paralyzed, in intense pain but unable to cry out, a torment amounting to cruel and unusual punishment.
Explaining their ruling, three justices -- Chief Justice John Roberts, Anthony Kennedy, and Samuel Alito -- said some risk of pain is inherent in any method of execution. But they said opponents of lethal injection failed to show the existence of another method that would be clearly more humane.
Dissenting Justices David Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg said executions should remain on hold while states would work out better safeguards against pain.
Justice John Paul Stevens voted with the majority, because the court has never found the death penalty itself unconstitutional, but he said for the first time that he now opposes it, a sign the fight over capital punishment is far from over.
The ruling freed the states to resume executions, on hold since September 2007, when the Supreme agreed to take up the issue. Twenty days after the court's decision, executions resumed when Georgia carried out a death sentence on May 6."; Pol_SCOTUS_2007_2008_Cases[i++] = new Array("","Voter IDs","Video: Supreme Court upholds voter ID laws","http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Video/080428/nn_pwilliams_SCOTUSvoterID_080428.htease.jpg","","", "", "", "", "", "right", "", "", "110", "147", "#000000", "", "", "", ""); Pol_SCOTUS_2007_2008_Cases[i-1].body = "
Case: Crawford v Marion County Election Board, 07-21 and Indiana Democratic Party v Rokita, 07-25
Issue: Requiring voters to show a government issued, photo ID at the polls
Status: Decided April 28, 2008
Read the ruling (.pdf)
Read the argument transcript (.pdf)
Details: In 2005, the Indiana legislature passed a law, on a strictly party line vote, requiring residents to show a government issued photo ID at the polls in order to vote. Republicans said it was needed to prevent voter impersonation fraud, even though no one had ever been prosecuted for it in the entire history of Indiana.
Democrats claimed the law would discourage people from voting who did not have a driver's license and who would find it burdensome to gather the necessary documents to get an ID -- the poor, minorities, and the handicapped -- who tend to vote Democratic. But when the Democrats went to court, they did not have a single example of someone who did not vote because of the ID rule.
Despite the partisan background, the Supreme Court's decision did not break down on the usual 5-4, liberal-conservative split. One of the court's more liberal members, John Paul Stevens, was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts in saying that voter impersonation fraud has been a problem around the country for years. Finding ways to prevent it is a legitimate goal for the states, they said.
The ruling said that even though a somewhat heavier burden may be placed on some potential voters, it's not enough of a burden to make the law unconstitutional, despite the fact that it was passed in a highly charged partisan atmosphere. The ruling is likely to encourage other states to adopt a similar photo ID requirement for voting."; // END editorial data