Slate Magazine - Supreme Court Dispatches

The best Supreme Court case ever about partying on the beach.

Dahlia Lithwick — Wed, 2 Dec 2009 19:52:37 EST

The line between what's public and what's private is—in the words of a recent Florida Supreme Court decision—"a dynamic boundary" that, "by its very nature, frequently changes." Tiger Woods is a public person who wishes he had more privacy. Party crashers Tareq and Michaele Salahi are private persons who probably wish they had a bit more publicity. Justice Anthony Kennedy—who assisted the Salahis in their quest to be larger-than-life by speaking at their wedding (skip ahead to the 50-second mark unless your tolerance for gloves and doves is higher than mine)—has been grappling very publicly of late with questions about when private speeches should be public and public ones should be private. And Kennedy and the rest of the Supreme Court devote a whole Gidget-ish morning to this private/public divide by pondering whether a private beach is still private when there's a noisy hot dog stand or a raging spring break taking place at the water's edge.

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The Supreme Court looks at life sentences for teen offenders.

Dahlia Lithwick — Mon, 9 Nov 2009 20:04:58 EST

In honor of 40 years of Sesame Street, today's Dispatch is brought to you by the letters L, W, O, and P (stands for life with out parole). And by the numbers 13, 17, and 2,574. And 73. And 9. And also 2. And by many, many other numbers that make you wonder how a roomful of people who went to law school presumably to avoid doing math could possibly spend two hours in a protracted exercise of freewheeling public accounting.

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Does the Constitution protect prosecutors who fabricate evidence?

Dahlia Lithwick — Wed, 4 Nov 2009 19:17:46 EST

For you constitutional-law scholars out there with casebooks to update, you may soon have an addition to the growing chapter of cases called "It Sucks To Be You." The facts of Pottawattamie County v. McGhee, the case the Supreme Court hears today, are spectacularly awful. But they may also prove spectacularly immaterial. In the Roberts Court era, "It Sucks To Be You" is a booming industry: Instances of shocking constitutional wrongs that cannot be corrected by constitutional courts.

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Paul Clement schools the high court on why some attorneys are worth every penny.

Dahlia Lithwick — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 19:49:31 EST

It's easy to forget that all nine Supreme Court justices are, at bottom, just recovering attorneys with long experience and strong opinions about lawyers, judges, the legal system, money, and trials. And that's why a simple little argument about attorneys' fees tells us a lot about how the justices think about the business of doing justice.

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The high court looks at religious symbols on public lands.

Dahlia Lithwick — Wed, 7 Oct 2009 19:14:17 EST

There's just one person at oral argument in Salazar v. Buono this morning who really wants to talk about whether a 5-foot cross on federal government land in the Mojave National Preserve violates the Constitution's Establishment Clause. But Justice Antonin Scalia really, really wants to talk about it. He looks particularly queasy when Peter Eliasberg—the ACLU lawyer whose client objects to crosses on government land—suggests partway through the morning that perhaps a less controversial World War I memorial might consist of "a statue of a soldier which would honor all of the people who fought for America in World War I and not just the Christians."

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