Welcome to our live blog! This morning we are waiting for one or more opinions, which the justices will release beginning at 10, before today's oral arguments.
Good morning, everyone! Welcome to our live blog -- I am here in the court's press room waiting to see what we get at 10 am.
The Court is going to hear argument today in U.S. v. Microsoft, a case about the Stored Communications Act that will have a relatively substantial impact on whether and how American and foreign tech companies store individual emails, as well as the return of Lozman v. City of Rivera Beach, a case that produced awesome hypotheticals about floating couches the last time it was in the Court.
There are so many opinions outstanding that it is hard to make too many predictions about what we could get. There aren't a lot of easy ones left from October, for example.
Five-minute buzzer just sounded.
Two boxes today. For those who don't join us often, the number of boxes is a ROUGH proxy for the volume of opinions that we will get.
I don't know if it's been used before, but I would not say "it is assumed the court of appeals will decide expeditiously" is boilerplate. That's making a point.
And the first case is indeed Merit Management Group v. FTI Consulting, per Sotomayor.
This was a case involving a provision of the Bankruptcy Code that allows trustees to set aside and recover some transfers for the benefit of the bankruptcy estate, including some fraudulent transfers "of an interest of the debtor in property."
There are also limits on these powers. The Court holds that the relevant transfer for purposes of the safe harbor in Section 546 of the code is the transfer that the trustee seeks to avoid.
I expect that Ronald Mann is covering this for us and will be able to explain it much better in his more detailed post!
Going back for next opinion.
Amy is exactly right -- this is a Ronald Mann case. Here is a link to the opinion on the Supreme Court's website: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-784_gdhk.pdf
Justice Alito has the opinion in Jennings v. Rodriguez. It is long and complicated.
Bottom line: the judgment of the Ninth Circuit is reversed and remanded.
This is a case that had to be reargued after the death of Justice Scalia, and then Justice Kagan recused herself.
Court rules that three provisions of federal immigration law do not give detained aliens the right to periodic bond hearings during the course of their detention.
The Ninth Circuit misapplied the canon of constitutional avoidance in holding otherwise, says the court.
Here are the details on votes: Justice Alito has the opinion of the Court, except for one part. Roberts and Kennedy join Alito's opinion in full. Thomas and Gorsuch join all but Part II of the Alito opinion, and Sotomayor joins one sub-part (III-C).
Thomas filed an opinion concurring in part and in the judgment, joined by Gorsuch except as to footnote 6.
Breyer dissents, joined by Ginsburg and Sotomayor. Phew.
Breyer has a lengthy (33 pages) dissent that concludes with an impassioned discussion of the Declaration of Independence, due process, Blackstone, and more. Back to see what's next.
Breyer is reading from his dissent, so I am back. For those of you who don't join us often, this is a relatively rare event, and signals how strong his disagreement with the opinion runs.
Can't tell, though, if Gorsuch doesn't want to "take no position on other jurisdictional hurdles" (which would be weird to express this way) or doesn't "agree with Justice O'Connor's opinion in Demore" (which would, frankly, make more sense).
Breyer is still talking. We are expecting at least one more opinion -- could come from Alito, Ginsburg, Thomas, Kennedy, or Roberts.
He is still reading, although sounds like maybe he is winding up . . . .
Final decision of the day is in Patchak v. Zinke, per Thomas.
Submit Event
