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SCOTUS Approach to Restitution

AUGUST 6, 2014

 SHERRY F. COLB

The Supreme Court’s Approach to Restitution For Victims of Child Pornography Possession

In April of this year, the U.S. Supreme Court decided the case of Paroline v. United States. In Paroline, the Court confronted a question about restitution for victims of the sexual abuse of children in the child pornography industry. In the particular case, the victim (whose pseudonym for the litigation is “Amy”) endured sexual abuse by her uncle when she was eight and nine years old. Her uncle perpetrated these violations against his niece in order to produce child pornography. Amy experienced tremendous psychological distress and other complications because of the abuse, and her suffering was severely compounded when she learned that her images were circulating on the Internet among consumers of child pornography.
In the case before the Supreme Court, Amy sought restitution from Doyle Randall Paroline, a man who pleaded guilty in federal court to possessing images of child pornography, including two of Amy. Federal law permits victims of child pornography to seek mandatory restitution from their perpetrators, covering the full amount of the victim’s losses. The argument for restitution for Amy under this federal law was that Paroline, by possessing Amy’s images, was part of the infliction of tremendous distress on her and should therefore be required to pay for the total amount of her resulting lost income, future treatment, and counseling costs, amounting to almost $3.4 million. Paroline, in response, claimed that he could not properly be expected to pay restitution in such amounts, given that a causal link could not be traced between his particular crime and any (let alone all) of the harm experienced by Amy, as required by the causation provision of the restitution statute.

- See more at: http://verdict.justia.com/2014/08/06/supreme-courts-approach-restitution-victims-child-pornography-possession#sthash.QrCKcJTE.dpuf

Federal Appeals Courts Divide Over Obamacare Subsidies—and Over “Textualism”

By Michael Dorf

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Last week, in Halbig v. Burwell, a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) lacked the statutory authority to provide health insurance subsidies for the millions of Americans who are subject to the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA’s) minimum coverage provision but live in states that did not establish their own health insurance “exchanges.” While professing regret over the “significant consequences” of their ruling “for the millions of individuals” who will lose their health insurance if the decision is ultimately upheld by the full D.C. Circuit and the Supreme Court, the court blamed Congress for having tied its hands.
Yet on the very same day, a unanimous panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit reached the exact opposite conclusion in King v. Burwell. Where the D.C. Circuit saw clear statutory language barring the federal subsidies, the Fourth Circuit saw ambiguity—and thus deferred to the IRS pursuant to the cardinal rule of administrative law permitting an agency reasonable room to fill in statutory gaps.

- See more at: http://verdict.justia.com/2014/07/28/federal-appeals-courts-divide-obamacare-subsidies-textualism?utm_source=Justia+Law&utm_campaign=6d9393c180-summary_newsletters_jurisdictions&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_92aabbfa32-6d9393c180-406021093#sthash.MVd9YjxA.dpuf

Nixon’s Uses, Abuses and Muses on the Supreme Court

July 25, 2014

JOHN DEAN

After spending four years transcribing all of Richard Nixon’s secretly self-recorded Watergate related conversations, about a thousand of them, and digesting them into narrative and dialogue for a book, The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It, I am deeply steeped in his presidency. Indeed, I know much more about him and his administration now than when I served as White House counsel.

While Nixon was not the first, nor certainly the last, president who sought to impose his politics on the U.S. Supreme Court, I came across information when examining his true role in Watergate based on his recorded conversations. It was the Supreme Court that effectively ended Nixon’s presidency, when it ruled against him unanimously forty years ago to the day—July 24, 1973—that I am writing this column. So I thought I might share some of the new information I discovered regarding Nixon’s uses, abuses and muses on the high Court.

- See more at: http://verdict.justia.com/2014/07/25/nixons-uses-abuses-muses-supreme-court#sthash.AFORuEpa.dpuf

Justices Divided Over Greenhouse Gas Regulations

Tony Mauro, The National Law Journal

February 24, 2014    |5 Comments

Sidley Austin's Peter Keisler

Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi / NLJ

U.S. Supreme Court justices appeared to be in the market for a compromise on Monday in a high-stakes dispute over the Environmental Protection Agency's power to regulate greenhouse gases from stationary sources.

During more than 90 minutes of oral argument in Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA, the justices seemed divided along classic liberal-conservative lines.

Readmore: http://www.thelegalintelligencer.com/id=1202644317874/Justices-Divided-Over-Greenhouse-Gas-Regulations#ixzz2ue34MnbI