Dean Polden announced earlier this week that the Sixth District Court of Appeal will be sitting in SCU Law’s moot court room in Bergin Hall on Tuesday, April 11, 2006 from 9:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.  The court’s official calendar for the morning of April 11th can be accessed on this page.  The library staff also wanted to provide quick access to the briefs available on Westlaw for these cases.  If you click on the links below, you’ll be prompted for your Westlaw sign-on information.  Enter your Westlaw sign-on information, and you’ll be taken directly to the full text of the brief:

 Cutler v. Kriens, et al.; Plotkin v. Kriens (Appellants’ Opening Brief only)

In re Stacy Marcus on Habeas Corpus (no briefs available on Westlaw)

Marriage of Ittai Bareket and Stacy Marcus (Respondent’s Brief only)

Osborn v. Pisoni, et al.; Ernst:  Appellants’ Opening Brief; Respondent’s Brief; Appellants’ Reply Brief

Foster v. KNTV Television, Inc., et al.: Appellants’ Opening Brief; Respondents’ Brief; Appellant’s Supplemental Opening Brief

Short summaries of the cases will also be available in the courtroom on April 11.   The library staff will place summaries on reserve at the library along with full-text copies of the briefs by this Friday, April 7th.

Members of the Santa Clara Law faculty spoke with students on September 17th about noteworthy cases in the Supreme Court term that begins on Monday, October 1st. The faculty panel was introduced by Professor Angelo Ancheta, Director of the Katherine and George Alexander Community Law Clinic, and included Professors Ellen Kreitzberg, Gerald Uelmen, Margalynne Armstrong, Deep Gulasekaram, Margaret Russell, and Brad Jooneph. A review of the 2006-2007 Supreme Court term will follow on Monday, October 15th.

Among the Supreme Court cases noted were:
 • Hall Street Associates v. Mattel, dealing with standards of review under the Federal Arbitration Act
• Kimbrough v. U.S., challenging sentencing guidelines relating to crack cocaine
• New York City Board of Education v. Tom F., scheduled for oral argument on the first day of the term, examines limitations on parents’ ability to obtain reimbursement for the cost of a private school education for the their disabled children under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).
• A petition for certiorari is currently pending in Parker v. District of Columbia, which challenges a ban on handguns in the District of Columbia. Parker could become the first case to strike down a gun statute on Second Amendment grounds, but the Court may not hear the appeal.
• Two Guantanamo Bay cases –  Boumediene v. Bush and Al Odah v. U.S. –  have been consolidated. Apart from their newsworthy topic, the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo, the cases are unusual because certiorari was originally denied in April 2007, but the Justices reconsidered and granted certiorari at the end of June. The Boumediene case is also of interest here at Santa Clara because Professor Beth Van Schaak  wrote an amicus brief for International Humanitarian Law Experts supporting the Petitioners. The brief is available on Westlaw (2007 WL 2441573) and LEXIS (2007 U.S. S. Ct. Briefs LEXIS 621).
• Medellin  v. Texas is a case concerning executive power.  The issue for review in Medellin is whether the President has the authority to make states comply with U.S. treaty obligations under the Vienna Convention by enforcing a decision of the International Court of Justice.

Concluding Monday’s discussion, Professor Joondeph called the audience’s attention to three additional cases, each of which could have an enormous economic impact:

• Third-party liability (ENRON):  Stoneridge Investment Partners v. Scientific-Atlanta
• Product liability: Riegel v. Medtronic
and
• State Bonds: Department of Revenue of Kentucky v. Davis

Some websites with additional information about the Supreme Court and its past and upcoming terms are:

• The Supreme Court webpage
• SCOTUS Blog / Supreme Court of the U.S. Blog
• Oyez
• On the Docket, Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism
and
• Justia: Supreme Court Cases