Appellate Advocacy Blog Weekly Roundup Saturday, March 5, 2022

Each week, the Appellate Advocacy Blog Weekly Roundup presents a few tidbits of news and Twitter posts from the past week concerning appellate advocacy. As always, if you see something during the week that you think we should be sure to include, feel free to send a quick note to either (1) Dan Real at DReal@Creighton.edu or on Twitter @Daniel_L_Real or (2) Catharine Du Bois at DuBoisLegalWriting@gmail.com or on Twitter @CLDLegalWriting.

US Supreme Court Opinions and News

• The Supreme Court reversed a lower court decision and upheld the death sentence for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the two the Boston Marathon bombers. The lower court’s decision had set aside the death sentence finding that the trial judge may have erred in excluding mitigating evidence. In reinstating the sentence, the Supreme Court ruled that Tsarnaev had received the fair trial guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment. See the order and reports from CNN, The Boston Globe, and the Wall Street Journal.

• This week, the Supreme Court heard argument in what is being touted as the most important environmental case in more than a decade. The case concerns the scope of the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulatory power, specifically, whether the Agency has authority to regulated power plants’ carbon emissions. But the decision may affect federal regulatory power more broadly. The arguments in the case concern the more central question of the scope of federal agencies authority overall. See links to the transcript and audio of the argument and reports from USA Today, Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times.

• The Supreme Court ruled that state-secrets doctrine protects against the disclosure of black-site locations. A Guantánamo detainee sought information concerning his allegations of torture by CIA contractors. The ruling determined that the information could confirm the location of a CIA black site and that the government could therefore assert national security concerns to protect the information. See the order and reports from The New York Times, USA Today, and The Washington Times.

• In a second state-secrets case, the Supreme Court overturned the Ninth Circuit and ruled that the government could invoke the state-secret doctrine to block claims alleging that the FBI violated the right to the free exercise of religion when it spied on Mosques after 9/11. The decision, which the Court described as “narrow,” does not block or end the lawsuit but sends it back to the Ninth Circuit to determine whether the secret evidence is core to the government’s defense.  See the ruling and reports from The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times.  

Appellate Court Opinions and News

• The First Circuit has ruled that a Massachusetts judge can be prosecuted for helping an immigrant avoid arrest. The court rejected the argument that the judge enjoyed immunity for actions taken in her official capacity. See the order and reports from the ABA Journal and Reuters.

In other news

• Vermont Governor Phil Scott appointed Judge Nancy Waples to be the first woman of color to serve on the Vermont Supreme Court. See the news release and a report from The Burlington Free Press.