U.S. Supreme Court

The U.S. Supreme Court is being criticized for not doing enough to open public access to court proceedings by a coalition formed to increase transparency in the judiciary, Legal Times' Tony Mauro reports: "'There remains much to be done to bring the institution in line with our expectations of openness from our nation’s top legal officials,' according to an end-of-term report issued by the Coalition for Court Transparency."

The issues being raised include having cameras present for Supreme Court oral arguments, more explanation on why the justices recuse themselves from cases, and the justices maintaining a no-protest zone in front of the Supreme Court.

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts joined with "unexpected allies--his liberal colleagues--in an alliance that drew some of the Supreme Court's major decisions closer toward the ideological middle in the term just concluded," the Wall Street Journal reports. For example, Roberts aligned with the liberal justices and conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy to uphold a precedent allowing securities fraud class-action plaintiffs to rely on the theory that market prices reflect all publicly available information and that keeping information from investors can constitute fraud on the market. But the test was refined so that corporations can more easily get class actions thrown out, WSJ reports.

The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that police officers may not search the cellphones of people they arrest without warrants yesterday. As The Washington Post's Craig Timberg writes, even though the National Security Agency is not mentioned in the opinion, the court's ruling could impact the future of government surveillance and the contours of digital-age privacy. Legal scholars noted that the opinion was unanimous and that the language was forceful that "the vast troves of information police can find in modern cellphones are no less worthy of constitutional protection than the private papers that Founding Fathers once kept locked in wooden file cabinets inside their homes," Timberg reports.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that it is an unconstitutional search and seizure for police officers to search someone's cell phone when arresting them, Volokh Conspiracy's Orin Kerr reports. The court said the searching a cell phone doesn't ensure that officers won't be harmed or that evidence won't be destroyed, which are both reasons that officers are allowed to search arrestees while taking them into custody: "'There are no comparable risks when the search is of digital data. In addition, [United States v.] Robinson regarded any privacy interests retained by an individual after arrest as significantly diminished by the fact of the arrest itself. Cell phones, however, place vast quantities of personal information literally in the hands of individuals. A search of the information on a cell phone bears little resemblance to the type of brief physical search considered in Robinson."

The U.S. Supreme Court, 6-3, has ruled that Aereo's service of streaming free broadcast TV over the Internet violates broadcasters' copyrights, Gigaom reports. U.S. Justice Stephen Breyer, writing for the majority, concluded that Aereo was more like a cable company that needs to pay retransmission fees to carry broadcast TV instead of a DVR service that lets consumer time-shift and space-shift where they watch TV, Gigaom also reports.

The U.S. Supreme Court has kept alive the main legal theory behind securities fraud class actions: that plaintiffs can rely upon the assumption that stock prices in efficient markets reflect all publicly available information and misstatements about a company's financial situation is a fraud on the market.

But the Supreme Court has increased the ability of defendants to rebut the presumptions that plaintiffs rely upon to allege that they were defrauded by company misstatements, the Legal Times' Tony Mauro reports. Now defendants will be able to rebut, before class certifications, that misstatements impacted stock prices.

According to a report by New York Times' Adam Liptak, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said from the bench yesterday that the Environmental Protection Agency is "'getting almost everything it wanted'" when the court ruled in favor of the agency's regulation of greenhouse gases. The agency said its regulation of emissions from motor vehicle tailpipes also requires the regulation of emissions from stationary sources like power plants.

The U.S. Supreme Court will wrap up its term a week from today, and there are several major cases left to be decided, USA Today reports. A couple highlights of issues to be decided: 

One, what is the scope of the presidential power to make appointments when the Senate is in recess?

Two, can the Environmental Protection Agency change the threshold for greenhouse gas emissions?

Three, can shareholders alleging securities fraud rely on the assumption that stock price reflects all available information instead of having to prove specifically that fraud affected stock prices? 

USA Today reports on one of the most hotly anticipated decisions left for this Supreme Court term: does Aereo's streaming service of free broadcast TV violate copyright law? Broadcasters argue that Aereo should have to pay to retransmit the signals. USA Today predicts that whatever the outcome there could be more cord-cutting: a win could lead broadcasters to charge more in fees and higher prices could lead customers to cord-cutting. A win for Aereo would lead to more cord-cutting too because of the ease and cheapness steming from technological choice.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled this week that software based on an abstract idea isn't eligible for patent protection, Politico reports. The decision in Alice Corporation Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank International did not end the patentability of all software nor provide a clearer test for when software can be patented, Politico further reports.