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Group wants Supreme Court to save war memorial
Court Watch |
2012/02/09 18:10
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Supporters of a war memorial cross deemed unconstitutional last year by a federal court plan to ask the Supreme Court to reverse the decision, amid a growing fight nationwide over the use of religious symbols to honor fallen troops.
A nonprofit legal firm, Liberty Institute in Dallas, planned to file its petition Thursday to preserve the 43-foot monument on federal land atop San Diego's Mt. Soledad — the same day the group called on combat veterans and supporters to rally at the picturesque site overlooking the Pacific Ocean in the suburb of La Jolla.
The Supreme Court has signaled a greater willingness to allow religious symbols on public land, and the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill last month that writes into law the propriety of displaying such markers at war memorials.
Last year's ruling by the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals capped two decades of legal challenges over the 1954 cross that became a memorial to Korean War veterans.
A number of other military memorials on public lands across the country have been challenged in recent years by civil liberty activists and atheists who say they violate the separation between church and state. The Supreme Court in 2010 refused to order the removal of a congressionally endorsed war memorial cross from its longtime home atop a remote rocky outcropping in California's Mojave Desert. |
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BofA investor lawsuit wins class-action status
Court Line |
2012/02/08 17:43
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Investors suing Bank of America Corp won class-action status for their lawsuit accusing the bank of fraudulently misleading them about the 2008 takeover of Merrill Lynch & Co and the size of Merrill's losses and bonus payouts.
U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel in Manhattan on Monday rejected the second-largest U.S. bank's argument that the investors could not prove they suffered losses by relying on materially misleading statements or omissions.
Among the other defendants who were also sued and opposed class certification were former Bank of America Chief Executive Kenneth Lewis, former Merrill Chief Executive John Thain, former Bank of America Chief Financial Officer Joe Price, and Bank of America's board of directors.
Lewis had won initial praise for saving Merrill from possible collapse when he agreed to buy it on September 15, 2008, the day Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc went bankrupt.
But investors later faulted the bank for not disclosing the scope of Merrill's soaring losses, which reached $15.84 billion in the fourth quarter of 2008, before December 2008 shareholder votes on the merger. They also objected to Merrill's having paid $3.6 billion of bonuses despite the losses. |
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Experts: Marriage ban's path to high court unclear
Legal Focuses |
2012/02/08 17:43
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Conservative critics like to point out that the federal appeals court that just declared California's same-sex marriage ban to be unconstitutional has its decisions overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court more often than other judicial circuits, a record that could prove predictive if the high court agrees to review the gay marriage case on appeal.
Yet legal experts seemed to think the panel of the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit of Appeals struck down the voter-approved ban on Tuesday purposefully served up its 2-1 opinion in a narrow way and seasoned it with established holdings so the Supreme Court would be less tempted to bite.
The appeals court not only limited the scope of its decision to California, even though the 9th Circuit also has jurisdiction in eight other western states, but relied on the Supreme Court's own 1996 decision overturning a Colorado measure that outlawed discrimination protections for gay people to argue that the voter-approved Proposition 8 violated the civil rights of gay and lesbian Californians.
That approach makes it much less likely the high court would find it necessary to step in, as it might have if the 9th Circuit panel had concluded that any state laws or amendments limiting marriage to a man and a woman run afoul of the U.S. Constitution's promise of equal treatment, several analysts said. |
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Utah high court to hear posthumous benefits case
Legal Focuses |
2012/02/07 18:09
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Utah's Supreme Court is deciding whether a sperm donor contract is proof that a man wanted to be a father, even after his death.
The question stems from a dispute between Gayle Burns and the Social Security Administration, which denied survivor benefits to the son Burns conceived after her husband died from cancer.
Oral arguments are set Tuesday in Salt Lake City.
Michael Burns had contracted with medical providers to preserve his sperm before he died of cancer in 2001. Gayle Burns became pregnant in 2003.
Social Security denied a 2005 benefits petition, saying federal law doesn't allow for payments to posthumously-conceived children.
Gayle Burns challenged the ruling in Utah's federal court.
A federal judge asked Utah's Supreme Court to address the issue first. |
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Norway mass killer demands medal at court hearing
Legal Focuses |
2012/02/06 18:03
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The right-wing extremist who has admitted killing 77 people in the worst peacetime massacre that Norway has ever seen told a court Monday that he deserves a medal of honor for the bloodshed and demanded to be set free.
Anders Behring Breivik smirked as he was led in to the Oslo district court, handcuffed and dressed in a dark suit, for his last scheduled detention hearing before the trial starts in April. He stretched out his arms in what his lawyer Geir Lippestad said was "some kind of right-wing extremist greeting."
Reading from prepared remarks, the 32-year-old Norwegian told the court that the July 22 massacre — carried out with a bomb, a rifle and a handgun — was a strike against "traitors" he said are embracing immigration to promote "an Islamic colonization of Norway."
Like in previous hearings, Breivik admitted to setting off the bomb outside the government headquarters in Oslo and opening fire at a Labor Party youth camp on Utoya island, outside the capital, but denied criminal responsibility and rejected the authority of the court.
About 100 survivors and relatives of victims watched in disbelief, as Breivik asked to be released, and told the judge he should receive a military honor for Norway's most deadly peacetime attacks. |
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