Tag Archives: SCOTUS

Textualism is not Strict Constructionism is not Originalism

As President Donald Trump prepares to appoint a second Supreme Court justice, the national dialogue has been saturated with gossip over what judicial philosophy the next nominee might bring to the bench. For legal nerds, SCOTUS nominations are what the World Cup is to soccer fans: the one time everyone else cares about your passion. […]

Ad Fontes: The Week in SCOTUS, Part Deux

[Ad Fontes was an early Renaissance and Reformation credo. Literally meaning “to the fountains,” the phrase embodied these movements’ emphasis on studying the original, primary sources in religious, philosophical, and scientific pursuits. This same commitment animates our efforts to follow our state and federal judiciaries’ decisionmaking in key cases being decided therein, given how these opinions shape the legal environment in which we live and work. As such, this periodic series seeks to provide quick but insightful summaries of recently issued decisions by courts across the country, with brief commentary on the potential implications or consequences of the decisions. Enjoy!

–LDB Editors]

Ad Fontes: SCOTUS’s Week in Review

A quick take on the Supreme Court’s opinions released on June 19, 2017.

Chief Justice Roberts and Original Spelling(e)

Patent exhaustion reached the SCOTUS docket last year, in the form of Impression Products v. Lexmark International. Handing down its 8-0 opinion this Tuesday (7-1 when counting RBG’s partial dissent from the resolution of the cross-border question) the Court delivered—in Ronald Mann’s words—a judgment “full of quotable maxims certain to populate the U.S. Reports for […]