Court Roundup

It's been an interesting day in the legal world, both at the nation's highest court and at lower levels.

Washington DC's "$67 Million Pants" lawsuit ended with victory for the accused owners of the dry cleaners. That these immigrants didn't get abused by our judicial system is heartening; what's still depressing is that though the judge forced the plaintiff (himself a judge) to reimburse the defendents' court fees, it's not clear yet whether they'll recover their tens of thousands of legal fees. This perfectly illustrates the kind of common sense reform the American legal system desperately needs.

The Supreme Court handed down its decision in Alaska's "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" (aka Morse v. Frederick) case, finding for the high school principle and limiting students' free speech. That said, the Court's decision (found here) restricts this limitation to the case at hand because of the illegal substances angle. The case produced some interesting bedfellows as the ACLU and religious freedom groups lined up behind the accused student, the former for obvious reasons, the latter fearing an infringement of students' expression of religion on campus.

The case that generated the most buzz, both in the blogosphere and the media at large, relates to the Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act (BCRA aka McCain-Feingold), specifically the law's provision banning issue ads in the last 60 days before an election. Speaking personally, this is one issue where I've moved right over the last few years; BCRA was an assault on free speech and as such I'm glad to see the Court rolling it back. Check out the chatter at Captain's Quarters,
Powerline, and several interesting pieces from SCOTUSblog here, here, and (oh well there was another but the link's being goofy). Whether BCRA can sustain another attack like this remains to be seen; I hope the answer is no.

Most of the chatterati still await the Court's decisions on a trio of school desegregation cases; nothing yet. For today, I think these cases are the big three (the first of course being from the realm of the absurd).