Court : US Supreme Court
Decided on : May-15-2006
..... establishment clause. id., at 105 106. flast held out the possibility that other specific [constitutional] limitations on art. i, 8, might surmount the barrier to suits against acts of congress brought by individuals who can assert only the interest of federal taxpayers. 392 u. s., at 105, 85. but as plaintiffs candidly concede, only the establishment ..... . id., at 433. we then reiterate[d] what we had said in rejecting a federal taxpayer challenge to a federal statute as equally true when a state act is assailed: the [taxpayer] must be able to show that he has sustained some direct injury and not merely that he suffers in some indefinite way in common ..... for legislative discussion and decision; if to every question under the laws and treaties of the united states it would involve almost every subject on which the executive could act. the division of power [among the branches of government] could exist no longer, and the other departments would be swallowed up by the judiciary. 4 papers of .....
Tag this Judgment!Court : US Supreme Court
Decided on : May-15-2006
..... position in this regard. see memorandum from ann r. klee, epa general counsel et al., to regional administrators, regarding agency interpretation on applicability of section 402 of the clean water act to water transfers (aug. 5, 2005), available at http://www.epa.gov/ogc/documents/water_transfers.pdf (as visited apr. 13, 2006, and available ..... united states, 522 u. s. 23 , 29 30 (1997) (if congress includes particular language in one section of a statute but omits it in another section of the same act, it is generally presumed that congress acts intentionally and purposely in the disparate inclusion or exclusion (internal quotation marks omitted)). iv warren s arguments against reading ..... disregarding the plain meaning of the word discharge, relying on 511(c)(2) of the clean water act, 33 u. s. c. 1371(c)(2). this section addresses the intersection of the act with another statute, the national environmental policy act of 1969 (nepa), 42 u. s. c. 4321 et seq. nepa imposes only procedural .....
Tag this Judgment!Court : US Supreme Court
Decided on : May-30-2006
..... s department in the criminal case, the lack of any policy at the district attorney s office for handling allegations of police misconduct, and the retaliatory acts he ascribed to his supervisors. two days later, the office dismissed ceballos s grievance, a result he attributes in part to his bar association speech. ..... hired to perform such a speaking assignment. he was paid to enforce the law by constitutional action: to exercise the county government s prosecutorial power by acting honestly, competently, and constitutionally. the only sense in which his position apparently required him to hew to a substantive message was at the relatively abstract ..... speaker in pickering , whose letter to the newspaper had no official significance and bore similarities to letters submitted by numerous citizens every day. ceballos did not act as a citizen when he went about conducting his daily professional activities, such as supervising attorneys, investigating charges, and preparing filings. in the same way .....
Tag this Judgment!Court : US Supreme Court
Decided on : Jun-19-2006
..... pollute navigable waters located any appreciable distance from them lacks credibility. r. pierce, technical principles related to establishing the limits of jurisdiction for section 404 of the clean water act 34 40 (apr. 2003), available at www.wetlandtraining.com/tpreljscwa.pdf, cited in brief for international council of shopping centers et al. ..... , 354 f. 3d 340 (ca5 2003) (reading waters of the united states narrowly as used in the oil pollution act of 1990). footnote 6 indeed, [t]he corps approves virtually all section 404 permit[s], though often requiring applicants to avoid or mitigate impacts to wetlands and other waters. gao report 8. footnote ..... (a) authorizes the administrator of the epa to issue a permit for the discharge of any pollutant, notwithstanding section 1311(a) of this title. section 1344 authorizes the secretary of the army, acting through the corps, to issue permits for the discharge of dredged or fill material into the navigable waters at specified disposal sites .....
Tag this Judgment!Court : US Supreme Court
Decided on : Jun-19-2006
..... may at least be agents of law enforcement when they conduct interrogations of 911 callers. for purposes of this opinion (and without deciding the point), we consider their acts to be acts of the police. as in crawford v. washington , 541 u. s. 36 (2004), therefore, our hold- ing today makes it unnecessary to consider whether ..... v. quarles , 467 u. s. 649 , 656 (1984) ( undoubtedly most police officers [deciding whether to give miranda warnings in a possible emergency situation] would act out of a host of different, instinctive, and largely unverifiable motives their own safety, the safety of others, and perhaps as well the desire to obtain incriminating evidence from ..... not require courts to acquiesce. while defendants have no duty to assist the state in proving their guilt, they do have the duty to refrain from acting in ways that destroy the integrity of the criminal-trial system. we reiterate what we said in crawford: that the rule of forfeiture by wrongdoing extinguishes confrontation .....
Tag this Judgment!Court : US Supreme Court
Decided on : Jun-22-2006
..... burden of proof. see ante, at 10. when issues of congressional intent with respect to the nature, extent, and definition of federal crimes arise, we assume congress acted against certain background understandings set forth in judicial decisions in the anglo-american legal tradition. see united states v. bailey, 444 u. s. 394 , 415, n ..... done maliciously ); black s law dictionary 968 (7th ed. 1999) (defining malice as [t]he intent, without justification or excuse, to commit a wrongful act ). footnote 5 professor lafave has explained the duress defense as follows: the rationale of the defense is not that the defendant, faced with the unnerving threat of ..... the defense of necessity, the defense of duress does not negate a defendant s criminal state of mind when the applicable offense requires a defendant to have acted knowingly or willfully; instead, it allows the defendant to avoid liability because coercive conditions or necessity negates a conclusion of guilt even though the necessary mens rea .....
Tag this Judgment!Court : US Supreme Court
Decided on : Jun-22-2006
..... , sex, or national origin. pub. l. 88 352, 704, 78 stat. 257, as amended, 42 u. s. c. 2000e 2(a). a separate section of the act its anti-retaliation provision forbids an employer from discriminat[ing] against an employee or job applicant because that individual opposed any practice made unlawful by title vii or made ..... otherwise adversely affect his status as an employee , because of such individual s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. 2000e 2(a) (emphasis added). section 704(a) sets forth title vii s anti-retaliation provision in the following terms: it shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer to discriminate against any ..... majority s interpretation has no basis in the statutory language and will, i fear, lead to practical problems. i two provisions of title vii are important here. section 703(a) prohibits a broad range of discriminatory employment practices.[ footnote 1 ] among other things, 703(a) makes it unlawful for an employer to discriminate against .....
Tag this Judgment!Court : US Supreme Court
Decided on : Jun-22-2006
..... commencement, and 42 u. s. c. 1997e(a), which expressly requires exhaustion of available administrative remedies with no reference to a federally based limiting principle. section 706(e) of title vii is also fundamentally different from the plra exhaustion provision. as interpreted by this court, 706(e) means that a complainant who ..... was in fact timely? cf. klehr v. a. o. smith corp., 521 u. s. 179 , 189 (1997) (explaining that, under the clayton act, each overt act in the case of a continuing violation, such as a price-fixing conspiracy, is sufficient to restart the statute of limitations). what about cases involving other types ..... only if the prisoner deliberately bypassed state remedies. that would be fanciful, however. the plra was enacted contemporaneously with the antiterrorism and effective death penalty act of 1996, which gave federal habeas review a structure markedly different from what existed before 1977. furthermore, respondent s interpretation would not duplicate that scheme, .....
Tag this Judgment!Court : US Supreme Court
Decided on : Jun-22-2006
..... rule of negative implication, when he draws attention to language governing temporal reach contained in the old reinstatement provision, but missing from the current one. section 242(f) applied to any alien [who] has unlawfully reentered the united states after having previously departed or been deported pursuant to an order of ..... inadmissibility to which fernandez-vargas would thereupon have been subject. because we conclude that 241(a)(5) does not operate on a completed pre-enactment act, we need not consider the retroactive implications either of the fact of his inadmissibility or of any variance between the period of inadmissibility upon a postenactment ..... removal proceedings. footnote 10 we understand fernandez-vargas s claim as falling within the second of justice story s categories of retroactivity (new consequences of past acts), not the first category of canceling vested rights. the forms of relief identified by fernandez-vargas as rendered unavailable to him by 241(a)(5) .....
Tag this Judgment!Court : US Supreme Court
Decided on : Jun-26-2006
..... have changed buckley s result. the buckley court was aware of the connection between expenditure limits and a reduction in fundraising time. in a section of the opinion dealing with feca s public financing provisions, it wrote that congress was trying to free candidates from the rigors of fundraising. ..... of presidential elections. when the seasoned campaigners who were members of the congress that endorsed the expenditure limits in the federal election campaign act amendments of 1974 concluded that a modest budget would not preclude them from effectively communicating with the electorate, they necessarily rejected the buckley ..... id. , at 55. it decided that the government s primary justification for expenditure limitations, preventing corruption and its appearance, was adequately addressed by the act s contribution limitations and disclosure requirements. ibid. the court also considered other governmental interests advanced in support of expenditure limitations. it rejected each. id. , .....
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