Subject: U.S. Supreme Court

• Paul House Saga Continues

  June 17, 2008

• Tennessee's Machinery of Death

  Tennessee may be about to carry out another execution--the first since federal Judge Aleta Trauger ruled 16 months ago that the slipshod way we perform lethal injections violates the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. The U.S. Supreme Court may have rendered her decision essentially moot, as the lawyers say, with a ruling in a Kentucky case that seemed to give the green light again to lethal injections around the country. Lawyers for condemned prisoners say the K

  February 2, 2009

• Memo to Lincoln County: Your Football Coach is an Idiot Who Should be Summarily Fired

  The Tennessean reports today on the possibility that a New Jersey case involving a football coach who prays with his student athletes could reach the U.S. Supreme Court. To give the story a local angle, reporter Mike Organ leads with the situation in Lincoln County, where high school football coach Louis Thompson boasts that practices always end with the Lord's Prayer and "we don't miss a day." Reasonable people can disagree about precisely how much a public school coach has to distance himself

  February 24, 2009

• No Booze Across State Lines? Tennessee, You Are Obnoxious!

  There's been a law on the books for years that bans folks like you and me from bringing wine, liquor or beer from other states into Tennessee. You know that trip to Sonoma you're planning on taking? Better drink all that cab first, because packing it in your suitcase makes you a criminal. Hell, you can't even ship it to yourself.My first instinct would be to flaunt this law, which is clearly unjust, anti-competitive and irritating as hell. But then I wonder: How is this even legal? The Constitut

  February 26, 2009

• Update: Lincoln County's Football Coach is Still an Idiot

  Last week we took note of the imbecilic Lincoln County High School football coach Louis Thompson, who thinks it's more important to lead his team in Christian prayer at practice every day than to follow clear principles of federal constitutional law. Thompson's defiant (read: ignorant) approach to the First Amendment's establishment clause came to light in a Tennessean story about a New Jersey lawsuit involving a public school football coach who prayed with his team -- a case the U.S. Supreme Co

  March 3, 2009

• Culture Warriors Storming the Capitol

  Culture War weirdness is returning to the Capitol in a big way. On Wednesday's agenda? A slew of anti-abortion measures, plus Stacey Campfield's "Don't Say Gay" bill prohibiting any mention of homosexuality in public schools. Yes, it's that special time we've all been waiting for when the legislature's new Republican majority begins to pay back its bug-eyed base. Outlawing abortions, of course, is at the top of the to-do list. Likely to pass tomorrow in the Senate Judiciary Committee is the in

  March 10, 2009

• Free at Last

  Why a federal judge is ready to let Paul House go

  April 10, 2008

• Death Row Lotto

  February 28, 2008

• Dead Again

  Yet another study of Tennessee’s death penalty falls flat after legislators refuse to extend the review an extra year

  February 14, 2008

• Attorney General or House Keeper?

  Tennessee’s top prosecutor makes a last-ditch attempt to keep an ailing and likely innocent man on death row

  January 24, 2008

• Death Becomes Us?

  November 15, 2007

• Machinery of Death

  Governor defiant, but executions could stop for months while courts decide constitutionality of lethal injection

  September 27, 2007

• Pleading for a Pardon

  State lawmakers and a federal judge urge the governor to free Paul House

  June 28, 2007

• A Vicious Circle

  The controversial Paul House case is now in the hands of the same federal judge who was unimpressed years ago with exonerating DNA evidence

  February 8, 2007

• The Straight Dope

  February 22, 2007

• News Briefly

  The court shall decide

  December 12, 2002

• The Week That Was

  Dell downsizes

  February 22, 2001

• Be Very Afraid

  December 14, 2006

• Justice Denied

  The U.S. Supreme Court says Paul House shouldn’t be on death row, but Tennessee officials don’t seem to care

  December 7, 2006

• SCOTUS Gets It Right

  June 15, 2006

• Ultimate Penalty

  November 7, 1996

• Judicial Activism

  The "Save the Court" movement comes to Nashville

  August 18, 2005

• The Day Property Rights Died

  July 7, 2005

• The Waltzies

  You can't win if you don't pay

  June 2, 2005

• Supreme Liberalism

  The high court takes an optimistic turn

  July 17, 2003

• Sex in the Senate

  Frist takes a long, deep bow to the right

  July 3, 2003

• Black and White

  Taking up affirmative action

  December 12, 2002

• News Briefly

  Womack endorses “avid hunter”

  April 25, 2002

• News Briefly

  Living to see another day

  April 11, 2002

• Metro Cracks Down

  The city continues its assault against sex businesses, even appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court

  March 14, 2002

• Through the Veil

  On the philosophy of the Phlorida Phiasco

  December 21, 2000

• All Too Human

  Reality and the rule of law often collide—like in the Supreme Court

  December 21, 2000

• Judicial Review

  Local lawyers rate coverage of presidential court games

  December 7, 2000

• Recruit Lawsuit

  High school football makes its way to the Supreme Court

  October 12, 2000

• Killing Time

  Tennessee prepares for its first executions in four decades

  September 23, 1999

• School Safety

  June 4, 1998

• Let It Stand

  March 12, 1998

• Sidebar

  July 10, 1997

• Online

  March 27, 1997

• De-Briefed

  January 9, 1997

• The White Tornado

  August 1, 1996

• Political Notes

  June 20, 1996

• Supreme Court Upholds Ruling Against Chrysler For Nashville Minivan Fatality

  A bankrupt Chrysler's plea to overturn a $13 million judgment against it for the death of an 8-month-old boy in Nashville was rejected this morning in the U.S. Supreme Court, the AP reports.A 1998 Dodge Caravan was rear-ended in 2001, "causing the front passenger seat to collapse and the passenger to strike (Joshua Flax)..." The collision fractured the boy's skull, killing him. His parents were initially granted $98 million in punitive damages in 2004, but this was later reduced.A jury found in

  May 26, 2009

• Basic Bribery and the Problem with Elected Judges

  "Don't fall off the earth till you rule on my case!"Dewayne Bunch, commander one of the Flat Earth Faction of the Tennessee GOP, is pushing hard for elected appellate court judges. It's not so much that he wants to improve the dispensing of law in our fair state. That's not Bunch's way. He merely believes the political climate is right to elect his kind of judges. You know, the people who believe that if they swim too far off the coast of North Carolina, they'll fall off the edge of the world. B

  June 12, 2009

• Tenn. Lethal Injection Method Not Unconstitutional

  The ruling by the U.S. District Court in Nashville that supported convicted murderer Edward Jerome Harbison's contention that Tennessee's method of lethal injection violated the Eighth Amendment has been vacated by the 6th Circuit, the News Sentinel reported.The U.S. Supreme Court had ruled in April that Kentucky's lethal injection method, which is similar to Tennessee's, was constitutional. The court's deliberation didn't stop Tennessee from executing convicted double-murderer Steve Henley earl

  July 2, 2009

• On gavels and gonads

  July 23, 2009

• Corker on Sotomayor: Huh?

  ​ ​ It's no big surprise that Bob Corker has decided to join his fellow GOP obstructionists in the Senate who oppose Sonia Sotomayor's Supreme Court nomination. It is a little unsettling, however, that his stated reasons are so vapid: "I have determined that Judge Sotomayor's record and many of her past statements reflect a view of the Supreme Court that is different from my own. I view the Supreme Court as a body charged with impartially deciding what the law means as it is applied to a

  July 30, 2009

• Ron Ramsey Urges Vote Against Sotomayor; She Ain't Gun Enough

  Ramsey attempt to court the Paul Stanley wing of the party​Tennessee gubernatorial aspirant Ron Ramsey doesn't seem to have learned from the backlash against the legislature's guns-in-parks-and-bars bills. So he's decided to insert himself into the confirmation vote on Judge Sonia Sotomayor, hoping to push his unique brand of gooberism on the federal level. In an announcement this afternoon, Ramsey called on Tennesseans to urge their senators to vote against the nominee. He doesn't actuall

  July 31, 2009

• Morning Roundup: A Dream Date with Steve Gill

  Tonight's the night for Steve Gill's Townhall Meeting on the Convention Center. ... Wanna see how ugly it gets when U.S. Supreme Court justices fight? Watch Clarence Thomas put a smackdown on John Paul Stevens over the (then) impending Cecil Johnson execution, with Liz Garrigan doing the play-by-play. ... Mark your calendars: there's caroling on Music Row this Friday. ... You can also get into the Christmas spirit, if that's your thing, by helping get presents for foster kids. ... Fisk Universi

  December 8, 2009

• Morning Roundup: Council Falls Into Line on Big Day for Karl Dean

  ​The big day is finally here, the day the Metro Council takes its anticlimactic vote for the Music City Center. Megan Barry, Lonnell Matthews Jr., Jerry Maynard and Vivian Wilhoite are all on board now, and even the "skeptical" Jason Holleman might vote yes. ... Nashville's Priorities collects 8,300 signatures by Nashvillians demanding a public referendum. President Obama plans to ask Congress for an extra $1.35 billion to expand his signature education program, the Race to the Top. ...

  January 19, 2010