By MICHAEL KIRKLAND, UPI Senior Legal Affairs Writer
WASHINGTON, May 5 (UPI) -- It's spring, and the U.S. Supreme Court is lifting a mighty hammer. When the justices bring that big hammer down, they may change forever the way the races interact in the United States, and may forever redefine the millennia-old definition of marriage.
By MICHAEL KIRKLAND, UPI Senior Legal Affairs Correspondent
WASHINGTON, April 21 (UPI) -- The U.S. Supreme Court is deciding under what conditions a company can patent the building blocks of life -- or in some cases the building blocks of death -- for profit.
By MICHAEL KIRKLAND, UPI Senior Legal Affairs Correspondent
WASHINGTON, April 14 (UPI) -- A proposed federal regulation that would undo some of the effects of the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling has been languishing at the Securities and Exchange Commission for a year and a half, but there are signs the commission may be making a decision on it relatively soon.
By MICHAEL KIRKLAND, UPI Senior Legal Affairs Correspondent
WASHINGTON, April 7 (UPI) -- A ruling last month by a federal judge in San Francisco for the moment has removed one of the FBI's most effective tools against terrorism, or upheld the Constitution's protections against unchecked government power, depending on your point of view.
WASHINGTON, March 31 (UPI) -- While the Texas case on affirmative action in college admissions is still pending, the U.S. Supreme Court surprisingly agreed last week to hear an affirmative action case out of Michigan that promises to be a genuine mover and shaker.
By MICHAEL KIRKLAND, UPI Senior Legal Affairs Correspondent
WASHINGTON, March 24 (UPI) -- The U.S. Supreme Court may be holding the political future of the United States in its hand as it tries to decide how far the states may go in requiring identification from those who attempt to vote.
By MICHAEL KIRKLAND, Senior UPI Legal Affairs Correspondent
WASHINGTON, March 17 (UPI) -- Republicans ripped the Obama administration when earlier this month it brought the son-in-law of Osama bin Laden to New York for trial instead of to Guantanamo and a military commission.
By MICHAEL KIRKLAND, UPI Senior Legal Affairs Correspondent
WASHINGTON, March 10 (UPI) -- Clint Eastwood has lent his raspy-voiced, steely-eyed presence to the debate over gay marriage, signing on to a brief asking the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down California's Proposition 8, which limits marriage to a man and a woman.
By MICHAEL KIRKLAND, UPI Senior Legal Affairs Correspondent
WASHINGTON, March 3 (UPI) -- As the images of 20 first-graders massacred in Connecticut, of the horrific attack on former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and others in Arizona, of the slaughter of movie-goers in Aurora, Colo., and of numerous other mass killings in the United States fade in the national memory, the fervor to restrict access to some types of weapons and magazines appears to be abating.
WASHINGTON, Feb. 24 (UPI) -- Kim Millbrook, a federal prisoner serving 31 years on a variety of charges, says on March 5, 2010, three corrections officers took him to a basement at the U.S. Penitentiary, Lewisburg, Pa., where one forced him down to perform oral sex on a second officer while the third officer stood watch. He wants to sue.
By MICHAEL KIRKLAND, UPI Senior Legal Affairs Correspondent
WASHINGTON, Feb. 17 (UPI) -- Suddenly drones are everywhere -- not in the skies over the United States, as they will be in their thousands in a few years, and not just hovering over foreign battlefields to strike terror in the heart of al-Qaida -- but as the focus of debate in the U.S. Congress and elsewhere.
By MICHAEL KIRKLAND, UPI Senior Legal Affairs Correspondent
WASHINGTON, Feb. 10 (UPI) -- A little noticed privacy case, seemingly insignificant but with large implications on how Americans actually live, is simmering away at the U.S. Supreme Court like a pot of hot coffee.
By MICHAEL KIRKLAND, UPI Senior Legal Affairs Correspondent
WASHINGTON, Feb. 3 (UPI) -- President Obama got his nose bloodied, in the legal sense, late last month by a muscular Washington appeals court that ruled several of his recess appointments were unconstitutional -- appointments made while the U.S. Senate was in what the administration says was a recess.
By MICHAEL KIRKLAND, UPI Senior Legal Affairs Correspondent
WASHINGTON, Jan. 27 (UPI) -- The nation marked the 40th anniversary last week of Roe vs. Wade, the landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling that recognized a woman's right to an abortion -- but the debates over abortion, and over the so-called morning after pill which some consider abortion, are far from over.
By MICHAEL KIRKLAND, UPI Senior Legal Affairs Correspondent
WASHINGTON, Jan. 20 (UPI) -- The U.S. Supreme Court may be getting ready to handcuff police in the nationwide fight against drunk driving, or it may be finally getting ready to enforce a basic constitutional right, depending on your point of view.
By MICHAEL KIRKLAND, UPI Senior Legal Affairs Correspondent
WASHINGTON, Jan. 13 (UPI) -- An earthquake of sorts struck Capitol Hill last week, though many working in that seat of government were unaware of it. The U.S. Supreme Court announced that William Suter, retired Army major general, was stepping down after 22 years as clerk.
By MICHAEL KIRKLAND, UPI Senior Legal Affairs Correspondent
WASHINGTON, Jan. 13 (UPI) -- The fight over same-sex marriage reaches a climax in March, when the U.S. Supreme Court has scheduled argument on California's Proposition 8 and on the federal Defense of Marriage Act on consecutive days.
By MICHAEL KIRKLAND, UPI Senior Legal Affairs Correspondent
WASHINGTON, Jan. 6 (UPI) -- Congress ended the suspense and re-enacted the FISA Amendments Act in late December, giving the U.S. Supreme Court, which has already heard argument on one aspect of the law, a living controversy to chew on.
By MICHAEL KIRKLAND, UPI Senior Legal Affairs Correspondent
WASHINGTON, Dec. 30 (UPI) -- A bitter fight is building in the U.S. Supreme Court between employers who say their religious convictions make them abhor contraception -- especially the "morning after pill" seen by many as an abortion-inducing drug -- and the Obama administration, which says contraception is a healthcare right under the law.
By MICHAEL KIRKLAND, Senior UPI Legal Affairs Correspondent
WASHINGTON, Dec. 23 (UPI) -- As the burials of 20 first graders and six of their teachers and caretakers sadly play out in grief-stricken Newtown, Conn., some powerful voices are calling for a look at a possible connection between the violent video games favored by young males and violent acts. But the chances of courtroom survival for any laws trying to curb such games are not good.
By MICHAEL KIRKLAND, UPI Senior Legal Affairs Correspondent
WASHINGTON, Dec. 16 (UPI) -- The U.S. Supreme Court, within the last five years, has twice affirmed the Second Amendment contains an individual right to bear arms, but in one of those majority rulings, the court's most conservative justice left room to control the types of weapons used in the Newtown, Conn., elementary school massacre, where 28 people were slaughtered, including 20 young children.
By MICHAEL KIRKLAND, UPI Senior Legal Affairs Correspondent
WASHINGTON, Dec. 16 (UPI) -- Edith Windsor is an unlikely civil rights hero, but at 83 she finds herself on the front lines of the fight over same-sex marriage.
By MICHAEL KIRKLAND, UPI Senior Legal Affairs Correspondent
WASHINGTON, Dec. 9 (UPI) -- The U.S. Supreme Court is considering whether a coalition of civil rights advocates and lawyers can challenge a law that allows spying on citizens in the United States without a warrant in the name of counter-terrorism -- but unless Congress steps on the gas the law will expire on New Year's Eve, leaving the high court case hanging in midair.
By MICHAEL KIRKLAND, UPI Senior Legal Affairs Correspondent
WASHINGTON, Nov. 25 (UPI) -- It's crunch time at the U.S. Supreme Court this week for proponents and opponents of same-sex marriage as the high court, like Oz, retreats behind the curtain to work its magic.
By MICHAEL KIRKLAND, UPI Senior Legal Affairs Correspondent
WASHINGTON, Nov. 18 (UPI) -- Is the conservative-leaning U.S. Supreme Court getting ready to gut the federal Voting Rights Act five decades after it was enacted?
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