Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

One big piece of news about the end of the Supreme Court's term is that it came without an announcement of anyone's retirement. There is no vacancy, thus we do not face the prospect of any further Trump effort to fill another seat through the remainder of his term. That's a good thing. As to the cases, I'd like to have something to say here about five as yet unmentioned. All of them important. Abortion Rights I've mentioned before a decision this term that may have helped persuade the evangelical Christian core of the Trump coalition that he isn't delivering for them: the reading of the civil rights act so as to protect gay employees from firings.  Here we reach another decision that might contribute to that disenchantment. And everything that weakens the Orange Dynast politically is at this moment a good thing. Abortion rights survive. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/18-1323_c07d.pdf The case this session was June Medical Services v...

This is the third in our four part discussion of the Supreme Court's October 2018 term, recently concluded. It has been a big year for the constitutional treatment of the criminal justice system, and we'll deal with four cases in that line here. We will ignore others that might have fit this theme, among them Gundy v. US (where the Court passed over an attempt to reinvigorate the nondelegation doctrine in this area) and Mitchell v. Wisconsin (involving a blood alcohol test on an unconscious man).  As always, my decisions on exclusion and inclusion in this review are final and unappealable. Excessive Fines The Bill of Rights did not originally limit the actions of state governments, only those of the federal government. That, at least, has been the reigning wisdom at least since Barron v. Baltimore (1833). As it happens, I now and then feel compelled to question the rightness of Barron , but I'll leave that aside. The various provisions of the Bill have, noneth...

Welcome back. We'll look at four cases, arranging in increasing order of the height of their media profile. Death with the Assistance of Counsel Diving right in there: in McCOY v. LOUISIANA (May 14)  the Court found that the "effective assistance of counsel" guaranteed by the 6th amendment to the Constitution requires that the defendant be able to choose the objective of his defense -- that is, whether the defense should be to concede the crime but plead mitigating circumstances, or whether it should deny guilt. In the case before the court, McCoy's attorney, Robert English, admitted to the jury repeatedly, and against his client's repeated instructions, that his client "committed three murders." Indeed, he told them there was "no way reasonably possible" that they could hear the case and come to any other conclusion than that McCoy was "the cause of these individuals' deaths." He tried to make the case for mercy, for seei...

Another term of the US Supreme Court has come and gone. Of course it hasn't really ended for you, my devoted readers, until you've had a chance to see what Christopher Faille thinks of it.  So here we are. There are many decisions this term that involve very important and topical matters that won't be discussed here or that (as in the case of state taxation of online sales) will only be glancingly mentioned. When that happens, it may be for no reason better than that they have been much covered and I have nothing in particular to add about them. I was tempted, when I first started outlining this material, to spend a fair amount of space on LAGOS v. US, an interpretation of the criminal restitution statute, that is, a statute aimed at getting the guilty to pay for the costs of enforcing the law against them. But I have overcome that temptation. Here, instead, is a very summary statement. In a unanimous opinion by Justice Stephen Breyer the Court adopted a narrow view o...