MLM Counties News. Notices. Need-to-know Information.

Would you like to spend some time in Geneva this summer? What about Lake Tahoe? Or is Rome more your flavor? Well, if you were Justice Antonin Scalia, you wouldn’t have to choose — you’d be heading to all three locales.

Tagged with: U.S. Supreme Court

The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that an individual convicted under a federal statute implementing an international treaty has standing to challenge the law on Tenth Amendment grounds could have a ripple effect in a host of future cases, from challenges to the federal health care law to drug litigation.

Tagged with: U.S. Supreme Court

As the October 2010 term draws nearer to its close, U.S. Supreme Court opinions are getting wordier. At the same time, the justices appear to be parsing those words much more by making frequent uses of dictionaries in their analyses. As USA Today’s Joan Biskupic points out, the later in the term, the longer opinions tend to be.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito said he should have recused himself from considering a 2009 Supreme Court case involving federal penalties for televised profanity — a move that would have changed the outcome of the case.

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether filing a false statement on a tax return is an aggravated felony, rendering a defendant deportable under federal immigration law. The defendants in Kawashima v. Holder, a Japanese married couple who were permanent residents, pled guilty for filing a false statement on a corporate tax return in violation of 26 U.S.C. §7206(1) for the purpose of hiding income. The husband’s plea agreement stipulated that he would pay $245,126 as restitution for the underpayment of taxes, but neither plea agreement included any admission of fraud or deceit.

Taking aim at a U.S. Supreme Court ruling they say strips workers and consumers of their right to redress against powerful corporations last week, lawmakers in both houses reintroduced the Arbitration Fairness Act, which would bar pre-dispute mandatory arbitration clauses in consumer and employment contracts and in civil rights disputes. Speaking to reporters, Sens. Al Franken, D-Minn., Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., said the court’s recent decision in AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion, holding that state laws limiting companies’ ability to require bilateral arbitration of disputes are preempted by the Federal Arbitration Act.

Even though police create an exigency by knocking on a door, the exigent circumstances rule still allows a warrantless search as long as the police conduct is reasonable, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled. The case stems from police pursuit of drug trafficker who sold cocaine to an undercover informant.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion, which held that federal law largely trumps states’ efforts to limit mandatory arbitration clauses in consumer contracts, left consumer advocacy groups wondering if anything can stop companies from drafting all such contracts to bar class actions, a move advocates say will hurt consumers.

The U.S. Sentencing Commission has voted to amend federal sentencing guidelines covering sentences for crack cocaine offenses and certain other offenses involving firearms.

Tagged with: U.S. Sentencing Commission

Even before she was nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court, then-Solicitor General Elena Kagan was largely shielded from discussions about the health care law and how to defend it, according to the National Law Journal’s Tony Mauro.

Tagged with: Elena Kagan

The U.S. Department of Labor has proposed new regulations that would require employers to document their attempts to hire American workers before employing foreign guest workers.