Although gay rights and healthcare are of critical importance to many Americans, there were a number of decisions passed by the Supreme Court this term. Because they generally haven't gotten attention, here is a list of them, with summaries and links to the decisions.
Monday, June 29, 2015
Thursday, June 18, 2015
Supreme Court Rules 5-4 on Texas Ban on Confederate License Plates
The Sons of Confederate Veterans plate design that started the issue. |
The Supreme Court ruled today that license
plate designs represent state speech and not personal speech, and
consequentially that the Texas DMV has the right to reject submitted specialty
plate designs for ideological reasons.
In a truly rare turn, the swing vote was not Kennedy, who voted with the
conservatives. Instead it was Thomas,
who voted against the conservatives and with the liberals for possibly the
first time in his life.
In
April 2011, the Texas DMB board did something it rarely does – it rejected a specialty
plate design. In this case, it was
offered by the Sons of Confederate Veterans, ("SCV") and it featured a “Confederate battle
flag” (incorrectly asserted as such – it was the battle flag of the Army of
Northern Virginia). They were initially deadlocked,
but then civil rights groups caught wind and it rapidly turned to a unanimous
rejection. Then the SCV sued.
SCV was
good to go on the appeal, as the appellate court ruled that the rejection
amounted to the state inserting its own speech into the speech of its
citizens. The Supreme Court reversal is
an unusual one, in that it distinguishes itself from many precedents preventing
the government from asserting its own speech into the speech of its
citizens. In this case, license plates,
which are a feature of a vehicle, must have a design approved of by the State.
The New
York Times reports that the flag does appear on license plates in Alabama,
Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee,
and Virginia. It is not clear if any of
those states will ban those designs now that the Federal Supreme Court has made
clear that doing so passes First Amendment review.
The
full text of the decision: http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/14-144_758b.pdf
Thursday, June 11, 2015
Pro Doc Summer Edition 2015 Ready for Downloading
The Summer 2015 access to ProDoc is available for download now. Current students, staff and faculty of South Texas College of Law can access the download information in Stanley under the library tab in the Electronic Resources channel.
Thursday, June 4, 2015
Solutions to the end of the Texas Subsequent History Table
So what are your options now?
While not everyone will see the solution as ideal, Thomson Reuters is recommending attorneys use KeyCite. The Fred Parks Law Library staff would like to remind our alumni that we have a limited version of WestlawNext available for in-library use where one can use KeyCite to find the disposition of a case. The Harris County Law Library also has public patron access to WestlawNext and Lexis.com, both of which have citator services that allow individuals to find the disposition of a case.
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