Bundling Up to Get to the Supreme Court Today: At Blog of the Legal Times, Tony Mauro posted early this morning about the continuing tradition of "No Snow" Days at the U.S. Supreme Court. While students up and down the East Coast enjoyed a three day weekend, Supreme Court Justices, law clerks, and attorneys arguing in District Attorney's Office for the Third Judicial District, et. al. v. Osborne, and Atlantic Sounding Co., Inc. v. Townsend, still had to be at Court on time today. Mauro writes that the "no snow delays" policy is consistent with late Chief Justice Rehnquist's policy of "almost never shut[ting] the Court down for snow[,]" particularly on argument days.
YouTube at the Supreme Court: Hattip to Howard Bashman at How Appealing for the link to Adam Liptak's New York Times article discussing the use of a citation to a video link in a petition filed in Buckley v. Haddock last month. According to Liptak, the video shows "what is either appalling police brutality or a measured response to an arrested man's intransigence..." As a new study in the Harvard Law Review points out, use of this type of evidence has the potential to unsettle the way appellate judges do their work. If Justices are allowed to view evidence for themselves, they may be less likely to defer to the factual findings of the jury. This was apparent in the Supreme Court's decision in Scott v. Harris, where the Justices were allowed to view video of a high-speed chase that resulted in a police officer terminating the pursuit by applying his push bumper to the rear of the vehicle, causing it to leave the road and crash. The new study took the same video the Justices viewed in Harris, and showed it to 1,350 people. Liptak writes that most viewed the video as the Supreme Court did, and thought the use of potentially deadly force by the police was justified by the risk Mr. Harris's driving posed. However, Liptak also reports that the study found that "African-Americans, liberals, Democrats, people who don't make much money and those who live in the Northeast were, ... 'much more likely to see the police, rather than Harris, as the source of the danger posed by the flight and to find the deliberate ramming of Harris's vehicle unnecessary to avert risk to the public.'"
YouTube at the Supreme Court: Hattip to Howard Bashman at How Appealing for the link to Adam Liptak's New York Times article discussing the use of a citation to a video link in a petition filed in Buckley v. Haddock last month. According to Liptak, the video shows "what is either appalling police brutality or a measured response to an arrested man's intransigence..." As a new study in the Harvard Law Review points out, use of this type of evidence has the potential to unsettle the way appellate judges do their work. If Justices are allowed to view evidence for themselves, they may be less likely to defer to the factual findings of the jury. This was apparent in the Supreme Court's decision in Scott v. Harris, where the Justices were allowed to view video of a high-speed chase that resulted in a police officer terminating the pursuit by applying his push bumper to the rear of the vehicle, causing it to leave the road and crash. The new study took the same video the Justices viewed in Harris, and showed it to 1,350 people. Liptak writes that most viewed the video as the Supreme Court did, and thought the use of potentially deadly force by the police was justified by the risk Mr. Harris's driving posed. However, Liptak also reports that the study found that "African-Americans, liberals, Democrats, people who don't make much money and those who live in the Northeast were, ... 'much more likely to see the police, rather than Harris, as the source of the danger posed by the flight and to find the deliberate ramming of Harris's vehicle unnecessary to avert risk to the public.'"
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