U.S. Supreme Court

msnbc has a report asking how American courts can avoid another capital punishment calamity after Clayton Lockett's botched execution with a three-drug cocktail. He was seen writhing in pain by witnesses and he died 43 minutes after the execution began. Three separate courts have stepped in to stop executions since Lockett's death, according to msnbc.

msnbc also notes that states have turned to compound pharmacies to get the execution drugs and at least 13 states have moved to shield from the public how they are obtaining the drugs.

The U.S. Supreme Court, 5-4, has ruled that Michigan can't block an off-reservation American Indian casino from opening because of tribal sovereignity, the Associated Press reports: "The ruling was a win for Indian tribes, which have increasingly looked to casinos as a source of revenue and have relied on immunity to shield them from government interference. But it's a disappointment for Michigan and more than a dozen others states that say the decision will interfere with their ability to crack down on unauthorized tribal casinos."

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected Florida's policy of making convicted murders eligible for execution if their IQ tests are 70 or above, USA Today reports. Florida must apply a margin of error to IQ tests administered to Freddie Lee Hall, convicted of killing two people in 1978. Justice Anthony Kenndey, author of the majority opinion, said: "'Florida's law contravenes our nation's commitment to dignity and its duty to teach human decency as the mark of a civilized world. The states are laboratories for experimentation, but those experiments may not deny the basic dignity the Constitution protects."'

The U.S. Supreme Court may be treating case law like it's Wikipedia, New York Times' Adam Liptak reports: "The Supreme Court has been quietly revising its decisions years after they were issued, altering the law of the land without public notice. The revisions include 'truly substantive changes in factual statements and legal reasoning,' said Richard J. Lazarus, a law professor at Harvard and the author of a new study examining the phenomenon."

Jeffrey L. Fisher, another law professor, told Liptak, "“In Supreme Court opinions, every word matters,' he said. 'When they’re changing the wording of opinions, they’re basically rewriting the law.”'

FiveThirtyEight's Harry Enten reports that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has been proven right in predicting--when the court struck down the federal ban on recognizing same-sex marriage--that "'by formally declaring anyone opposed to same-sex marriage an enemy of human decency, the majority arms well every challenger to a state law restricting marriage to its traditional definition.'" Since the ruling in United States v. Windsor, same-sex marriage has comes to states because federal courts have ruled in favor of challengers to bans on same-sex matrimony, Enten concludes.

If the U.S. Supreme Court decides to curb securities fraud litigation, it's widely expected that they'll use the arguments advanced by law school professors Joseph Grundfest or Adam Pritchard, Reuters' Alison Frankel reports. Both filed competing amicus briefs in Halliburton Co. v. Erica P. John Fund. 

The case is challenging the theory that share prices reflect all publicly available information and that there is a fraud on the market when corporations misrepresent the truth publicly, Frankel writes. Grundfest argued that investors can't recover money damages at all without showing they relied on misstatements, while Pritchard suggests that investors "should be required to show that corporate misrepresentations distorted share prices by offering evidence of a market correction when the truth was revealed," Frankel reports.

During oral argument, Justice Anthony Kennedy cited Pritchard's position, Frankel said.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled, 6-3, today that the doctrine of laches, or undue delay, does not bar the heir of the coauthor of a screenplay that was that the basis of the boxing film, "Raging Bull," from suing for copyright infringement, Forbes reports. The ruling sets up a three-year rolling period in which copyright owners can sue for infringement, but they only can sue for profits earned during that three-year window.

There was an unusual lineup in the court's majority and dissent: "Conservative Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito joined in an opinion by liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg, while Chief Justice John Roberts and Anthony Kennedy joined a dissent by equally liberal Stephen Breyer," Forbes also reports.

The petition of certiorari made by New York Times reporter James Risen, who the Fourth Circuit has ruled must identify a confidential source in the case of a former CIA agent suspected of being a leaker, will be considered by the U.S. Supreme Court at a May 29 conference, SCOTUSblog reports.

Lee Levine, a leading First Amendment lawyer with Levine Sullivan Koch & Schulz, has said he does not think that the U.S. Supreme Court would take the case. If the U.S. Supreme Court takes the case, there could be five votes in favor of recognizing a qualified common law privilege for reporters’ confidential sources, Levine said. Justice Anthony Kennedy would be the key vote, he said.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy has been the author of key gay rights opinions. He wrote the opinions in Romer v. Evans, holding that a Colorado constitutional amendment barring providing any special legal protection to gays and lesbians lacked a rational relationship to any legitimate governmental purpose, Lawrence v. Texas, holding that Texas' law against sodomy violated  substantive due process protection for consensual sexual conduct, and United States v. Windsor, holding that the federal Defense Against Marriage Act was unconstitutional. But opponents to same-sex marriage are now "seizing upon other opinions by Kennedy himself," the Associated Press reports: "It was Kennedy who last month defended the right of voters to decide sensitive issues, in a ruling that upheld Michigan's ban on taking race into account in college admissions. At least five states have invoked Kennedy's opinion in the Michigan case to argue that voters and elected officials, not judges, should choose whether same-sex couples can be married or have their marriages recognized within their borders."

A study shows that U.S. Supreme Court justices back freedom of speech when the speakers share a similar political world view, the New York Times' Adam Liptak reports. For example, Justice Antonin Scalia voted to uphold the free speech rights of conservative speakers 65 percent of the time and liberal ones 21 percent.