Can Charlottesville revoke the permit for the “Unite the Right” rally August 12?
A demonstration permit cannot be revoked based on the content of the speeches, but it can be revoked if the plans for the rally don’t contain adequate security, or if new information suggests a likelihood of violence....
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Maybe a “terrorist exception” to Miranda?
Oh, gee. I thought I was done. I found another line of cases specific to terrorism cases. It is not called a “national security exception.” The case that I am reading at the moment is the case of the underwear bomber, who tried on Christmas Day, 2009, to blow up a plane flying into Detroit […]...
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More on the national security exception and Tsarnaev
More on the so-called national security exception to Miranda – I have found no case by any court in the country that finds a “national security exception” to the Fifth and Sixth Amendments. In fact, running the phrase “national security exception” through Westlaw, with a proximity search for “Miranda,” I get only one case in […]...
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National Security exception to Miranda?
The Department of Justice has been talking about the supposed national security exception to the Fifth and Sixth Amendment. As I discuss at length in my earlier post, this has its roots in the public safety exception of New York v. Quarles, 467 U.S. 649 (1984), where a defendant had been arrested in hot pursuit […]...
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No “National Security” exception available in Tsarnaev
News stories dealing with the arrest of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev have often referred to some 48-hour “national security” exception to the rules about reading Miranda warnings and questioning suspects. The articles start from one mistake, and move on to make two more. First, let’s be clear what we are NOT talking about. There is no Constitutional […]...
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Fourth Circuit puts meaning to Search and Seizure rules
The Fourth Circuit strikes down a search of a black man, finding that the government’s so-called “rule of two” — where there is one handgun, there will be another — was not probable cause. This opinion is a solid defense of the proposition that all of us, regardless of skin color, should be protected from warrantless searches, and it is shows how important it is for judges to be sensitive to the experiences of minorities in our society....
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Why did Chief Justice Roberts vote to uphold the Affordable Care Act?
Chief Justice Roberts voted to uphold the Affordable Care Act to keep the Supreme Court from becoming the dominant issue in the Presidential election....
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Justice Scalia approaches the healthcare debate as a political one
In the recent oral arguments over the healthcare debate, Justice Antonin Scalia showed in his questioning that the debate for him was about politics, not about law. ...
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Foreign drugs can’t be imported to kill people
U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon has ruled that states who want to use sodium pentothal as a part of the mixture of drugs that goes into a lethal injection can’t use imported pentothal, because the FDA has not certified that it is safe. Conservatives have the knee-jerk reaction — “judicial activism” — but any analysis of what “judicial activism” disproves that idea....
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Culpeper murder verdict reversal highlights flaws in system
Michael Hash was falsely imprisoned for 12 years on a capital murder conviction based on prosecutorial and police misconduct. And Virginia’s trial procedures need to change so that this doesn’t happen again....
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