On the last day of the term, the justices surprised many by agreeing to take up DACA, setting in motion for next year the highly anticipated argument over immigration policy and presidential authority left hanging three years ago with the court's 4-4 split in a related case, United States v. Texas.
Justice Stevens's jurisprudence was rooted in a humanism that honored reason and individual dignity and a patriotism that understood the US as a vibrant, unified republic.
Because the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution bans cruel and punishment, it places certain limits on whom may be executed, including the State may not execute a person who is so mentally incapacitated as to not have a rational understanding of the basic reasons for the execution, in light of Ford v. Wainwright, and Panetti v. Quarterman. This past term, in the case of Madison v. Alabama, the United States Supreme Court considered the scope of that limitation.
The retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy and his replacement with Justice Brett Kavanaugh will likely shape the doctrine of the United States Supreme Court in significant ways for decades to come. The rejection of challenges to partisan gerrymandering in Rucho v. Common Cause offered an early example of the impact of this transformation.
The government action at issue in American Legion v. American Humanist Association concerned a 94-year-old, 32-foot-high "Peace Cross" on a pedestal atop a busy intersection near Bladensburg, Maryland. The Peace Cross was erected by private groups in 1925 as a memorial to the 49 citizens of Prince George's County, Maryland, who died in World War I. The State of Maryland took ownership of the site in 1961 and has maintained it with public funds ever since.
In Knick v. Township of Scott, Pa., 139 S. Ct. 2162 (2019), the Supreme Court overruled decades-old precedent to hold that Takings Clause plaintiffs can come to federal court without first exhausting their state court remedies. The court's holding discards a 1985 ruling the consequences of which went far beyond what the justices in that case likely contemplated when they first required exhaustion of state remedies.
In Franchise Tax Board of California v. Hyatt, 139 S. Ct. 1485 (2019), the United States Supreme Court held that one state cannot constitutionally waive another state's sovereign immunity with respect to suits filed against the second state in the courts of the first state. In so doing, the court overruled its decision in Nevada v. Hall, 440 U.S. 410 (1979).
This term the Supreme Court held that a trial court may properly consider a prosecutor's past history of Batson violations when evaluating that prosecutor's reason for striking a juror in a current case. The challenge arose from a murder case that originated in the small town of Winona, Mississippi, more than two decades ago.
Sometimes, significant impact arises in the unobserved work of the Supreme Court, even while it is in session. The court often issues orders that appear to deal with procedural issues. But even those seemingly innocuous decisions can have significant impact. Such a scenario arose during the October 2018 Supreme Court term as it relates to the ability of transgender persons to serve in the military.
Not all Supreme Court arbitration decisions feature strident 5-4 splits of opinion. Such contentious cases, like Lamps Plus this year (see separate analysis), deal with requirements that claimants pursue their claims alone, rather than en masse. When it comes to arbitration procedure, however, the court generated unanimous opinions in New Prime Inc. v. Oliveira, 139 S. Ct. 532 (2019) and Henry Schein, Inc. v. Archer & White Sales, 139 S. Ct. 524 (2019).
It is becoming a tradition: each year, we seem to get another 5-4 Supreme Court decision enforcing arbitration that requires individual, and forbids aggregate, resolution of claims. This year's case is Lamps Plus, Inc. v. Varela, 139 S. Ct. 1407 (April 24, 2019). Neither the result nor the 5-4 split surprised anyone.
Two professors in the Center for the Study of Law and Religion published Cambridge University Press titles that examine intersections of religion and law.