Five New Rulings from The Supreme Court of the United States
Photo by Phil Roeder, CC BY 2.0
A busy day during a busy term for SCOTUS, as five rulings covering everything from water rights, to immigration, to federal weapons restrictions for those under domestic violence restraining orders.
From SCOTUSBlog, with links to decisions:
The court released five opinions in cases from the current term.
In Texas v. New Mexico, the court upholds the U.S.’s objections to a consent decree that would resolve the dispute over each state’s allocation of the waters of the Rio Grande.
The court rules 6-3 in Department of State v. Munoz that a citizen does not have a fundamental liberty interest in her noncitizen spouse being admitted to the country.
In Erlinger v. United States, the court rules that under the Armed Career Criminal Act, which imposes mandatory prison terms, a judge should use a preponderance-of-the-evidence standard to decide whether the offenses were committed on separate occasions or instead a jury must make those decisions unanimously and beyond a reasonable doubt.
In Smith v. Arizona, the court rules for the state that the confrontation clause does not bar an expert to present an absent analyst’s true statements in support the expert’s opinion.
The Supreme Court rejects the challenge to the constitutionality of a federal law that bans the possession of a gun by someone who has been the subject of a domestic violent restraining order in United States v. Rahimi.
So amongst other things, SCOTUS has now determined that keeping brown people out of the country outweighs a foundational tenant of marriage, while at the same time saying “Why yes, we can regulate who gets to possess firearms within the structure of the second amendment”. Got it.Report
Only people in the militia should be allowed to get married.Report
IIRC, Congress passed specific legislation some time back stating that members of the armed forces may bring their non-citizen spouses into the country.Report
Anything not explicitly allowed is forbidden.Report
A very old joke among people interested in comparative law: In Anglo-American law, everything is permitted unless it is forbidden; in German law, everything is forbidden unless it is permitted; in Russian law, everything is forbidden especially what’s permitted; in French law, everything is permitted, especially what’s forbidden.
I didn’t say it was funny.Report
I get the Russian and French part, but could you elaborate a bit on the real differences between Anglo-American and German law that form the basis for this joke?Report
It’s about the difference in common law and civil law systems. The reality of course is that all of the other countries referenced have a civil law system. My civil procedure professor would also make that joke.Report
All four are actually crude cultural stereotypes. The idea, such as it is, is that the Anglo-American system presupposes that people should do what they want unless some law says otherwise, and that Germans should do what they’re told unless some law gives permission.Report
The statutes in question state that Courts have no power to review the decisions made by consulates in issuing visas. This applies to every US consulate in the entire world including Europe. Some consulates are known to be more creative in finding reasons to deny visas than others. Guangzhou Consulate and Ho Chih Minh City consulates are similar.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consular_nonreviewabilityReport
Texas vs. New Mexico was 5-4.
This ain’t over, I reckon.Report
Going to be lots of SC arguments over water in the West for the next few decades. Not enough water and divided in a wonky manner.Report
At the time of division it wasn’t wonky. The problem is there have been significant economic and population changes since. And no real mechanism to make changes over time.Report
I was always partial to JW Powell’s idea that western states should be divided by natural water basins. That would make more sense that lots of squares and straight lines in a giant mostly semi arid/arid area. That’s not going to be changed of course at this date.
There was no way for people back then to anticipate we would be draining the Colorado dry and various water tables shrinking.Report
Twenty extended families in the Imperial Valley get more water from the Colorado River than Nevada’s entire allocation. The families do a lot of vegetables, but their primary cash crop is alfalfa.Report
Not for years. Next step is probably to appoint a new special master, since the current one didn’t get the states to come to a proper decision. This will be either the fourth or fifth SM for the case, I believe.
From memory, so suspect, but the US objection is that the consent decree didn’t settle the issue of whether withdrawals from an aquifer that is hydrologically linked to a surface water flow is a withdrawal from the surface water. The engineering answer to the question has always been yes, with a multiplier between 0 and 1. Most western state water law has always assumed the answer is no. If the Supreme Court ever holds that the engineering answer is the correct one, all hell will break loose.Report
This is based off of nothing but my prejudices but… if you told me that a question had two answers: An engineering one and a legal one and asked me which one was more likely to represent the state of affairs in reality, I’d probably pick the engineering one every single time and twice on Sunday.Report