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Hanging Up on Philip Morris

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Forget about that call, Philip Morris. The Supreme Court has hung up.

The case of Philip Morris USA Inc. v. Williams was supposed to bring at least a little more clarity to one of the messiest areas of the Supreme Court's jurisprudence. When does a state court's holding that a party has failed to properly preserve his federal question preclude federal court review of that question? The issue pops up now and then in the Supreme Court's own review of state court decisions, both criminal and civil. In the lower federal courts, it is an issue in habeas review of criminal judgments. For that reason (we have no position on cigarette litigation), CJLF filed this amicus brief asking the Court to clean up its act. (In a nutshell, just read the late C.A. Wright and do what he says.)

Alas, the high court today dismissed the case as "improvidently granted." As usual, it gave no explanation.

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