Overviews of the upcoming Supreme Court case analyses are posted .Batches of five to the 16,000 subscribers of the LII’s Supreme Court awareness service, including editorial board members of such major newspapers as the Boston Globe. Subscribers and other visitors to the Supreme Court awareness page can then click on the cases that interest them to get the constitutional issues involved, questions to be presented before the court, summaries of the cases and detailed analyses, with historical references and links to earlier, relevant cases.
How Law Students Drive Case Analysis
“Our editorial team picks out the most significant cases, or the ones with the broadest appeal,” explained Derek Schaffner, editor-in-chief of the new Supreme Court awareness project. The students review upcoming cases in a small office on the fifth floor of Myron Taylor Hall, assisted by Bruce and staff member Sara Frug. On the wall and online are color-coded charts showing what’s on the docket for the high court and when hearings are scheduled. They assign the cases to a team of 20 law students, whose analyses they later review and edit.
“The experience gives law students a different opportunity to apply the skills they’ve learned here,” says Schaffner, adding that the work “requires creativity, originality and teamwork.” Potential employers are likely to be interested in students who have such skills, he said, “because the majority of law work is collaborative.”Students often turn to law school faculty for guidance when the issues in a particular case mesh with their expertise. Among those who have consulted recently on Supreme Our readers thrive on controversy,” interjected managing editor Jason Tompkins. “You get something like Roper v. Simmons, you’re going to have strong opinions on both sides.”
Landmark Cases and Controversial Issues
Under challenge in that case is the constitutionality of executing prisoners who were under 18 at the time they committed a capital crime. Anybody interested in learning more about the case before the Supreme Court hears oral arguments about it, Tompkins said, can go to the Supreme Court awareness Web page (see above) and click on Roper v. Simmons to discover that one issue at stake is whether executing minors violates the 14th Amendment against cruel and unusual punishment. The LII analysis notes that an important factor in the high court’s review is likely to be whether teenagers are fully capable of understanding the wrongfulness and consequences of their actions in light of new research on emotional development, and it contains information on how many states have executed juveniles lately (only seven since 1976).
Another case that caught the editorial team’s attention concerns the constitutionality of medical marijuana (go to the Supreme Court awareness Web page and see Ashcroft v. Raich). Other cases that the students have analyzed for the awareness project are on states’ rights to regulate the sale of alcoholic beverages and an economically distressed municipality’s right to seize private property and sell it to developers.
