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Samuel Alito

Aug 9, 2013

Cellphone search cases move closer to US Supreme Court

The U.S. Supreme Court may soon addresses an issue it has carefully avoided until now: Just how much privacy do Americans enjoy in the information contained within and emanating from their cellphones?

Jun 24, 2013

Court makes it harder to sue businesses

A sharply divided Supreme Court on Monday made it more difficult for Americans to sue businesses for discrimination and retaliation, leading a judge to call for Congress to overturn the court's actions.

Jun 3, 2013

US high court: Ex, not current wife, keeps life insurance proceeds

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that a divorced Virginia woman could not be forced to surrender the proceeds of a federal employee life insurance policy that she received as her ex-husband’s named beneficiary.

May 30, 2013

Procedural default not a bar to ineffective assistance claim, justices rule

A deeply divided U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that a procedural default in state court did not bar a Texas death row inmate from seeking relief in federal court based on the assertion that he was denied the effective assistance of counsel at sentencing.

May 20, 2013

US high court upholds FCC power in cell tower disputes

The Supreme Court has affirmed the authority of federal regulators to try to speed local government decisions on proposals to build or expand cellphone towers.

May 1, 2013

US Supreme Court dismisses ineffective counsel case

After taking up and hearing arguments in a case considering whether a delay caused by a state’s failure to fund counsel for an indigent’s defense should be a factor in determining whether the defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial was violated, the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed the case as improvidently granted.

Apr 29, 2013

In extortion case, US Supreme Court to decide what constitutes ‘property’

Defining “property” may seem an easy task. But for the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court it may be much trickier as they consider whether a nonbinding recommendation for an investment fund qualifies as “property” that can be the subject of attempted extortion.

Apr 16, 2013

Court struggles with question of human gene patentability

Drawing a legal line to determine when human genetic material ceases to be a creation of nature and instead becomes a patentable product is not easy — even for the U.S. Supreme Court.

Mar 18, 2013

Supreme Court Justices to consider out-of-state lab testing

If a Wisconsin defendant on trial for two sexual assaults cannot cross-examine the out-of-state lab analyst who prepared his underlying DNA profiles, have his constitutional rights under the Confrontation Clause been violated?

Mar 1, 2013

US Supreme Court’s double jeopardy ruling a blow to prosecutors

The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling last week that a defendant cannot be retried, even when his acquittal was based on a judge’s blunder, was cheered by defense attorneys.

Mar 1, 2013

US high court asks when procedural defaults bar ineffective assistance claims

Less than a year after creating a narrow right to make a federal ineffective assistance of counsel claim in a post-conviction proceeding despite a procedural default in state court, the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court tried to carve out the contours of that ruling during oral arguments in Trevino v. Thaler.

Feb 26, 2013

High court takes up question of arrestee DNA sampling

The Supreme Court will soon decide what one justice called its most important criminal procedure case in decades: whether to allow police to take DNA samples from people who have been arrested.

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