Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98 (2000), was a decision of the United States Supreme Court on December 12, 2000, that settled a recount dispute in Florida's 2000 presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore. On December 8, the Florida Supreme Court had ordered a statewide recount of all undervotes, over 61,000 ballots that the vote tabulation machines had missed. The Bush campaign immediately asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stay the decision and halt the recount. Justice Antonin Scalia, convinced that all the manual recounts being performed in Florida's counties were illegitimate, urged his colleagues to grant the stay immediately. On December 9, the five conservative justices on the Court granted the stay, with Scalia citing "irreparable harm" that could befall Bush, as the recounts would cast "a needless and unjustified cloud" over Bush's legitimacy. In dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that "counting every legally cast vote cannot constitute irreparable harm." Oral arguments were scheduled for December 11.
In United States constitutional law, a regulatory taking occurs when governmental regulations limit the use of private property to such a degree that the landowner is effectively deprived of all economically reasonable use or value of their property. Under the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution governments are required to pay just compensation for such takings. The amendment is incorporated to the states via the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Inverse condemnation is a legal concept and cause of action used by property owners when a governmental entity takes an action which damages or decreases the value of private property without obtaining ownership of the property through the use of eminent domain. Thus, unlike the typical eminent domain case, the property owner is the plaintiff and not the defendant.
Golan v. Holder, 565 U.S. 302 (2012), was a Supreme Court case that dealt with copyright and the public domain. It held that the "limited time" language of the United States Constitution's Copyright Clause does not preclude the extension of copyright protections to works previously in the public domain.
Hudson v. Michigan, 547 U.S. 586 (2006), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that a violation of the Fourth Amendment requirement that police officers knock, announce their presence, and wait a reasonable amount of time before entering a private residence does not require suppression of the evidence obtained in the ensuing search.
Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council, 505 U.S. 1003 (1992), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States established the "total takings" test for evaluating whether a particular regulatory action constitutes a regulatory taking that requires compensation.
Plaut v. Spendthrift Farm, Inc., 514 U.S. 211 (1995), was a landmark case about separation of powers in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that Congress may not retroactively require federal courts to reopen final judgments. Writing for the Court, Justice Scalia asserted that such action amounted to an unauthorized encroachment by Congress upon the powers of the judiciary and therefore violated the constitutional principle of separation of powers.
Vieth v. Jubelirer, 541 U.S. 267 (2004), was a United States Supreme Court ruling that was significant in the area of partisan redistricting and political gerrymandering. The court, in a plurality opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia and joined by Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Clarence Thomas, with Justice Anthony Kennedy concurring in the judgment, upheld the ruling of the District Court in favor of the appellees that the alleged political gerrymandering was not unconstitutional. Subsequent to the ruling, partisan bias in redistricting increased dramatically in the 2010 redistricting round.
Williamson County Regional Planning Commission v. Hamilton Bank of Johnson City, 473 U.S. 172 (1985), is a U.S. Supreme Court case that limited access to federal court for plaintiffs alleging uncompensated takings of private property under the Fifth Amendment. In June 2019, this case was overruled in part by the Court's decision in Knick v. Township of Scott, Pennsylvania.
In Nollan v. California Coastal Commission, 483 U.S. 825 (1987), the United States Supreme Court ruled that a California Coastal Commission regulation which required private homeowners to dedicate a public easement along valuable beachfront property as a condition of approval for a construction permit to renovate their beach bungalow was unconstitutional. The Coastal Commission had asserted that the public-easement condition was a legitimate state interest of diminishing the "blockage of the view of the ocean" caused by the home renovation, even though the easement wouldn't create any additional public view of the ocean. The Court held that in evaluating such claims, there must be an "essential nexus" between a legitimate state interest and the actual conditions of the permit being issued.
American Electric Power Company v. Connecticut, 564 U.S. 410 (2011), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court, in an 8–0 decision, held that corporations cannot be sued for greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) under federal common law, primarily because the Clean Air Act (CAA) delegates the management of carbon dioxide and other GHG emissions to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Brought to court in July 2004 in the Southern District of New York, this was the first global warming case based on a public nuisance claim.
Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency, 566 U.S. 120 (2012), also known as Sackett I, is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that orders issued by the Environmental Protection Agency under the Clean Water Act are subject to the Administrative Procedure Act. The Court ruled that because the Environmental Protection Agency's orders constitute "final agency action" under the Administrative Procedure Act, federal courts may hear appeals from its orders.
Fisher v. University of Texas, 570 U.S. 297 (2013), also known as Fisher I, is a United States Supreme Court case concerning the affirmative action admissions policy of the University of Texas at Austin. The Supreme Court voided the lower appellate court's ruling in favor of the university and remanded the case, holding that the lower court had not applied the standard of strict scrutiny, articulated in Grutter v. Bollinger (2003) and Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978), to its admissions program. The Court's ruling in Fisher took Grutter and Bakke as given and did not directly revisit the constitutionality of using race as a factor in college admissions.
Koontz v. St. Johns River Water Management District, 570 U.S. 595 (2013), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that land-use agencies imposing conditions on the issuance of development permits must comply with the "nexus" and "rough proportionality" standards of Nollan v. California Coastal Commission and Dolan v. City of Tigard, even if the condition consists of a requirement to pay money, and even if the permit is denied for failure to agree to the condition. It was the first case in which monetary exactions were found to be unconstitutional conditions.
Utility Air Regulatory Group v. Environmental Protection Agency, 573 U.S. 302 (2014), was a US Supreme Court case regarding the Environmental Protection Agency's regulation of air pollution under the Clean Air Act.
Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, 572 U.S. 291 (2014), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States concerning affirmative action and race- and sex-based discrimination in public university admissions. In a 6-2 decision, the Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause does not prevent states from enacting bans on affirmative action in education.
Horne v. Department of Agriculture, 569 U.S. 513 (2013) ; 576 U.S. 351 (2015), is a case in which the United States Supreme Court issued two decisions regarding the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The case arose out of a dispute involving the National Raisin Reserve, when a farmer challenged a rule that required farmers to keep a portion of their crops off the market. In Horne I the Court held that the plaintiff had standing to sue for violation of the United States Constitution’s Takings Clause. In Horne II the Court held that the National Raisin Reserve was an unconstitutional violation of the Takings Clause.
Kerry v. Din, 576 U.S. 86 (2015), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court analyzed whether there is a constitutional right to live in the United States with one's spouse and whether procedural due process requires consular officials to give notice of reasons for denying a visa application. In Justice Anthony Kennedy's concurring opinion, the controlling opinion in this case, he wrote that notice requirements “[do] not apply when, as in this case, a visa application is denied due to terrorism or national security concerns.” Because the consular officials satisfied notice requirements, there was no need for the Court to address the constitutional question about the right to live with one's spouse.
Mullenix v. Luna, 577 U.S. ___ (2015), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that a police officer who shot a suspect during a police pursuit was entitled to qualified immunity. In a per curiam opinion, the Court held that prior precedent did not establish "beyond debate" that the officer's actions were objectively unreasonable.
Bank Markazi v. Peterson, 578 U.S. ___ (2016), was a United States Supreme Court case that found that a law which only applied to a specific case, identified by docket number, and eliminated all of the defenses one party had raised does not violate the separation of powers in the United States Constitution between the legislative (Congress) and judicial branches of government. The plaintiffs, in the case had initially obtained judgments against Iran for its role in supporting state-sponsored terrorism, particularly the 1983 Beirut barracks bombings and 1996 Khobar Towers bombing, and sought execution against a bank account in New York held, through European intermediaries, on behalf of Bank Markazi, the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The plaintiffs obtained court orders preventing the transfer of funds from the account in 2008 and initiated their lawsuit in 2010. Bank Markazi raised several defenses, including that the account was not an asset of the bank, but rather an asset of its European intermediary, under both New York state property law and §201(a) of the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act. In response to concerns that existing laws were insufficient for the account to be used to settle the judgments, Congress added an amendment to a 2012 bill, codified after enactment as 22 U.S.C. § 8772, that identified the pending lawsuit by docket number, applied only to the assets in the identified case, and effectively abrogated every legal basis available to Bank Markazi to prevent the plaintiffs from executing their claims against the account. Bank Markazi then argued that § 8772 was an unconstitutional breach of the separation of power between the legislative and judicial branches of government, because it effectively directed a particular result in a single case without changing the generally applicable law. The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York and, on appeal, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit both upheld the constitutionality of § 8772 and cleared the way for the plaintiffs to execute their judgments against the account, which held about $1.75 billion in cash.
