Private: LegalEyes for May 1, 2014

Justice Antonin Scalia is facing criticism for “flatly misstating core facts from one of his own prior opinions.” In Environmental Protection Agency v. EME Homer City Generation, decided Tuesday, Justice Scalia’s dissent cites to his 2001 opinion in Whitman v. American Trucking Association.  However, “the EPA's stance in [Whitman] was the exact opposite of what Scalia said it was in Tuesday’s opinion.”  Sahil Kapur at Talking Points Memo highlights an “unusually major mistake” at the high court.

 

Controversy continues to surround Oklahoma’s botched execution of Clayton D. Lockett. Erik Eckholm and John Schwartz at The New York Times report on Gov. Mary Fallin’s response to the troubling event “defending the death penalty but order[ing] an independent autopsy of Mr. Lockett and a thorough review of the state’s procedures for lethal injections.” In response to Gov. Fallin’s proposal, the ACLU of Oklahoma stated that the governor’s planned efforts “create a serious conflict of interest” and that the “Attorney General and Governor fought every attempt at transparency or accountability in our execution process.” Steven Erlanger at The New York Times notes the “outrage in Europe over the flawed execution.”

 

The Honorable Lynn Adelman, U.S. District Court Judge for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, ruled that Wisconsin’s state’s voter ID law violated the Fourteenth Amendment and Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Ari Berman at The Nation has the story.

 

Alex Kreit at Marijuana Law, Policy & Reform comments on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit’s unlawful user law that “makes it a crime for anyone who ‘is an unlawful user of and addicted to a controlled substance’ to possess a firearm.”