:

Guess I'm missing something, Phil, but what's the connection you see between the Iqbal grant and the prosecution-planning conference? Ashcroft v. Iqbal concerns the resort by an individual plaintiff to federal court to seek civil damages against high-ranking federal officials. In so doing, he followed  a decades-old path: ...

In holding that the reach of the Constitution is to be measured functionally, not formally, a majority in Boumediene resolves a question previously muddled by plurality opinions.   Whether U.S. agents must adhere to the U.S. Constitution when acting outside U.S. territory is a question various courts have answered in different ways. As ...

In seeking to defend the call for a novel means to prosecute persons suspected of terrorism, Ben deploys phrases like ''viable trial regime'' and ''what we want as a society'' and ''another legitimate system.'' He contends that absent adoption of this new-fangled mechanism, ''we will consequently put a huge amount of weight on whatever ...

I know I am not an American citizen in the eyes of the powers that be. With these words the story of a historic New Orleans neighborhood comes full circle. It was in this neighborhood that even before the Civil War hommes de couleur libré—free people of color—led lives of style and culture. It was in this neighborhood that fiery journalists ...

Thanks to D.C.-based ''Convictions'' reader Mark I. Levy for sending this late entry to last month's Recusal Quiz: In answer to our question on seminal cases in which one more recusal would have compelled the Supreme Court to affirm without opinion—as it did last month in an Alien Tort Statute case—Mark points us to ...

Eric, thanks for your post on the ''natural disasters'' op-ed. (Can it really be that someone surnamed Blow is the Times' new storm reporter?) It leaves this takeaway: As often as not, so-called ''natural disasters'' owe the latter word as much to acts of human agency as anything else. Floods and wildfires ...

While much of the country trains its eyes on South Dakota and Montana tomorrow, California voters also will go to the polls. According to my 23-page ''Official Voter Information Guide'' and my 40-page ''Sample Ballot and Voter Information Pamphlet,'' I'm to choose candidates for four partisan offices (ranging from Congress to ...

Can't let the month of May end without answering the Recusal Quiz question. As readers will recall, the quiz was occasioned by Linda Greenhouse's report that the Supreme Court had affirmed a lower court decision. The reason? Four justices recused themselves on account of ''[f]inancial and personal conflicts of interest'' in the ...

Was struck by something in this week's decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in The American Council of the Blind v. Paulson (judgment available here). It was not the court's 2-1 holding that, by refusing to design and issue paper money so that visually impaired persons can readily distinguish among ...

The Rasmussen poll's (un)favorability ratings for individual Supreme Court justices surely intrigue. But how can they be squared with repeated polls indicating Americans don't even know the names of the nine folks on the court? Consider FindLaw's December 2005 ''Supreme Court Awareness Survey,'' which found that ''only 43 percent of American ...