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Samantar v. Yousuf

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Samantar v. Yousuf
Argued March 3, 2010
Decided June 1, 2010
Full case nameMohamed Ali Samantar, Petitioner v. Bashe Abdi Yousuf, et al.
Docket no.08-1555
Citations560 U.S. 305 (more)
130 S. Ct. 2278; 176 L. Ed. 2d 1047
Case history
PriorYousuf v. Samantar, 552 F.3d 371 (4th Cir. 2009); cert. granted, 557 U.S. 965 (2009).
Holding
The FSIA, which provides that a "foreign state shall be immune from the jurisdiction" of both federal and state courts except as provided in the Act, 28 U. S. C. §1604, did not govern petitioner's claim of immunity.[1]
Court membership
Chief Justice
John Roberts
Associate Justices
John P. Stevens · Antonin Scalia
Anthony Kennedy · Clarence Thomas
Ruth Bader Ginsburg · Stephen Breyer
Samuel Alito · Sonia Sotomayor
Case opinions
MajorityStevens, joined by Roberts, Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, Alito, Sotomayor
ConcurrenceAlito
ConcurrenceThomas (in part)
ConcurrenceScalia (in judgment)
Laws applied
Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act

Samantar v. Yousuf, 560 U.S. 305 (2010), is a decision by the United States Supreme Court concerning whether Muhammad Ali Samatar, prime minister of Somalia (during the dictatorship of Siad Barre) from 1987 to 1990, could be sued in United States courts for allegedly overseeing killings and other atrocities. Samatar then lived in Virginia, and some of his victims had sued him under the Torture Victim Protection Act of 1991.

In a previous decision, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit held that the former Somalian government official is not covered by, and therefore not entitled to immunity under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. The Court remanded to District Court to determine whether defendant is entitled to common law immunity.

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  • Supreme Court: The Term in Review (2009-2010) Part 2 of 2

Transcription

Welcome back. Some of the most interesting and important decisions the Court reached this term involved the First Amendment. They address questions of free speech, religious freedom, and freedom of association. Suzanna Sherry and Erwin Chemerinsky are here to help us understand those opinions and their implications. Perhaps the most important decision of this term and certainly one of the most anticipated was Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. In 2003 the Court upheld the portion of the Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act, otherwise known as the McCain-Feingold Act, that prohibited independent expenditures by corporations and unions 30 days before a primary or 60 days before a general election for advertisements over broadcast media for or against an identifiable candidate. That decision was McConnell v. Federal Election Commission. Citizens United, a conservative political action corporation, made a highly critical video about Hillary Clinton to be shown over video-on-demand services. The original question was whether McCain-Feingold applied to video-on-demand. But after holding the case over for re- argument this term, the Court had the parties argue whether its McConnell decision or an earlier decision allowing restrictions on corporate expenditures, Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, should be overturned. Erwin, how did the Court deal with these precedents? The Court overruled them. The Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision said that prior cases established that spending money in elections is core political speech. The Court said that corporations have the same free speech rights as individuals; therefore, corporations have the same right to engage in independent expenditures. The earlier cases were based on the premise that the government can prevent the distorting effects of corporate wealth on the election process. The Supreme Court expressly overruled that. Did the Court leave any way for Congress to regulate campaign expenditures, Suzanna? Yes, it did. First the Court upheld the disclaimer and disclosure provisions of the law because those provisions don't prevent anybody from speaking. So the Court says those provisions need to be justified only by an important state interest, and informing the electorate is a sufficiently important state interest. The Court also explicitly did not decide whether Congress has a compelling interest in regulating expenditures by foreign corporations. How widespread do you think this decision will be felt? Well, if Congress acts to reenact limitations, the courts will have to consider the constitutionality of any new laws under the principles that the Court announced in this case. And what the Court has told us is that direct limits on corporate political speech have to be narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling state interest, and that combating the distorting effects of wealth, as Erwin mentioned was an earlier interest, is not such a sufficient interest. I agree with Susanna, but I think the effects are going to be even broader than that. This means that any state or local campaign finance law limiting what corporations and unions can spend is unconstitutional. I also think that limits on contributions are likely to be vulnerable. Now, the Court here didn't deal with laws that prevent corporations and unions from contributing money to candidates. But once the Supreme Court says that corporations have the same free speech rights as individuals, it's hard to see then why they wouldn't have the same right to make contributions to candidates that individuals have. The constitutionality of another federal statute was in question in our next case, Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project. Here the federal law was 18 U.S.C. section 2339B, which prohibits provision of material support or resources to foreign groups designated as terrorist organizations. The plaintiffs of this case wanted to provide humanitarian aid, legal training, and political advocacy to 2 organizations designated as terrorist groups by the U.S. State Department. These were a pro-Kurdish independence organization, called the PKK, and a group supporting the Tamils in Sri Lanka, called the LTTE. The plaintiffs challenged the law on 3 grounds: first, that it was unconstitutionally vague; second, that it violated their First Amendment speech rights; and third, that it violated their First Amendment association rights. The Supreme Court upheld the law on all 3 challenges. Suzanna, can you explain why they did that? Well, before I do I have to talk about interpreting the statute, because the Court had to interpret the statute before it reached the constitutional issue. The plaintiffs had argued that the statute should be interpreted to require an intent to further an organization's terrorist activities. But the Court rejected that because the statute requires only that the person providing material support knows that it has been designated a terrorist organization or that it engages in terrorist acts. Once the Court interpreted the statute that way, then it said that the language was not vague, because a person of ordinary intelligence would know whether the activities he wanted to engage in were prohibited. And the Court did say that many of the activities that the plaintiffs wanted to engage in were prohibited by the statute. What about their First Amendment speech rights? The Court found the speech at issue in this case was not protected by the First Amendment. It's important to note that some of what the individuals wanted to do was just expressive activity. One group of the plaintiffs said that they wanted to advise one of the groups with regard to how to use international law for peaceful purposes. But the Supreme Court said that could be used to aid terrorist activity. Another group of plaintiffs wanted to be able to help a group raise money for humanitarian purposes. The Supreme Court said that could be diverted to terrorist activity. So the Supreme Court said, since this was speech coordinated with a foreign terrorist organization, it was not protected by the First Amendment. The Court actually took a sort of a middle road with regard to the speech at issue. The plaintiffs had argued that this was pure speech, and the government had argued that it was pure conduct with only incidental effects on speech. And the Court rejected both of those. It rejected the government's argument that the Court should apply intermediate scrutiny under U.S. v. O'Brien, and instead the Court applied what it called a more demanding standard and then upheld the statute under that demanding standard. How do you think these decisions--this decision is going to play out in the future? That's actually a little hard to tell because of the standard of review question. The majority never says that it's applying strict scrutiny, although some of its language seems to ... to sound like strict scrutiny. For example, the Court talks about the "government's urgent objective of the highest order" and says that courts can't abdicate their responsibilities on questions of free speech. So it might have been--applied strict scrutiny and then have been persuaded by the evidence that the statute was necessary to prevent terrorist activity. But there is other language in the opinion that suggests a more deferential approach. For example, the Court says that the views of the political branches are "entitled to deference" and that there is "no reason to question" congressional findings. So it's possible that the Court is applying a more deferential standard. I want to emphasize that latter point. There is a good deal of language in Chief Justice Robert's majority opinion about the need to defer to Congress and the Executive when it comes to fighting foreign terrorism. And that's the ultimate distinction the Court focused on with regard to speech. The Court says anybody has the right to engage in independent advocacy, even for the goals of a foreign terrorist organization, but coordinated speech with a foreign terrorist organization is not protected by the First Amendment, and it can be punished. The First Amendment rights of student religious groups were the issue in our next case, Christian Legal Society v. Martinez. Hastings Law School in San Francisco had a policy that in order for a student group to be recognized, and therefore financially assisted by the school, the group had to agree not to deny membership to any student on the basis of several factors, including religion and sexual orientation. The CLS chapter on campus wanted to deny membership to non-Christians and what it called "unrepentant" gays and lesbians. When the law school refused to recognize the chapter as a Registered Student Organization, or RSO, CLS sued the school for violation of its free speech, expressive association, and free exercise rights under the First Amendment. The district court granted the school summary judgment, and the appeals court affirmed. Same result on the Supreme Court, Suzanna? Same result. They affirmed, but the important part of the case was the framework that the Court used to analyze the question. What the Court said is that Hastings, in recognizing these student organizations, had created a "limited public forum" and that the jurisprudence of limited public forum doctrine applied to both the speech claims and the expressive conduct claims. And then under that jurisprudence, a-- restrictions on speech or on expressive conduct are constitutional as long as they are reasonable and viewpoint neutral. And the Court called Hastings' "all comers" policy a textbook example of viewpoint neutrality because it requires all student organizations to accept all students. The Court also emphasized that this wasn't the situation where the school was forcing student groups to accept members. So this is about the school deciding what student groups it wanted to fund. Also, the Court emphasized that there were other ways in which the Christian Legal Society could reach out to and meet with its members. Erwin's last point is very important because the majority notes that the limited public forum jurisprudence is based on that distinction--on the distinction between a state prohibition on speech and a state refusal to support speech. So this case is limited only to cases where the state refuses to support the speech. Erwin, you're the dean at a law school at a public university. What does this decision mean to you? I think it's a very important decision. This is a hard case because there's a tension between the school's desire to stop discrimination by student groups and the freedom of association claim. I think what this means for public university law schools is to say that every student group has to be available to all students. Where does the money for students groups come from? It comes from a student activity fee and it also comes from the state. And what the Supreme Court is saying here is it's wrong to force students to pay money to support groups that they can't be a member of. But the Court did say it had to be strictly applied across those settings, right? It's very important--Suzanna said it-- here the Supreme Court, because of a stipulation in the trial court, assumed that this was an "all comers" policy. However, I think where you'll see litigation in the future is challengers arguing that schools aren't applying their policies in an even-handed way-- that whatever it may say in the language of the policy, it's discriminatory in enforcement. And the Supreme Court is very much left with open challenges on that basis. Group rights were also at the heart of the decision in Doe #1 v. Reed. Washington state adopted a law expanding the rights of same sex partners. A private group named Project Marriage Washington gathered more than a hundred and thirty-seven thousand signatures to put on a referendum on the ballot to have the law repealed. Under another Washington state law, public documents like the petitions listing the names and addresses of the referendum supporters are available on request. Referendum opponents sought to obtain these petitions in a plan to post them on the Internet so the names of the referendum supporters were made public. The petitioner in this case, known only as Doe #1, and others sued in federal court to enjoin the petition's release, arguing that the public records law was unconstitutional as applied to petitions to referenda and initiatives, and that applying the public records law here was unconstitutional because it would likely lead to threats, harassment, and reprisals. The district court agreed with the plaintiffs on Count 1 and so never reached Count 2. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed. Erwin, what did the Supreme Court decide? The Supreme Court affirmed the Ninth Circuit and remanded the case. The Supreme Court said that it does not inherently violate the First Amendment to disclose the signers for a ballot petition. The Supreme Court said that signing a petition for a referendum like this is political speech. The Court emphasized how the state has many interests in that disclosure. Disclosure can prevent fraud. Also apart from fraud, it might disclose individuals who signed more than one petition or signed the petition more than once, or a situation where individuals who signed weren't registered voters. I think that's right on the doctrine, but there was a dissent and so many concurrences that it--it's not exactly clear where we go from here. For example, Justice Thomas finds that any disclosure of names would violate the First Amendment. And Justice Alito, in a concurrence, indicates that he would be likely to find that the disclosures in this case violate the First Amendment because they impose such a severe burden on the plaintiffs. But on the other hand, Justices Stevens, Ginsburg, and Breyer and Sotomayor think that plaintiffs face a very heavy burden in trying to show that disclosures violate their rights, and that plaintiffs are unlikely to be able to satisfy that burden in this case or in most cases. And Justice Scalia doesn't think that there's any right to anonymity at all. He doesn't think the First Amendment is implicated. So by my count, that makes 2 votes to block most releases of information and 5 votes, counting Justice Stevens, to allow most releases of this information. So I think the Chief Justice, Justice Kennedy, and the new justice will be the deciding votes in future cases. Thanks, Suzanna. Thanks, Erwin. Erwin and Suzanna will be back in a moment with Stephanie to talk about some federalism decisions. The Court's federalism decisions can sometimes seem a bit arcane when compared to other opinions dealing with more meat and potato issues, like search and seizure or habeas corpus. But the two federalism decisions we're going to talk about next deal with such real world problems as gun violence and the legal rights of federal prisoners deemed to be sexually dangerous. McDonald v. the City of Chicago follows on the Court's historic decision from 2 terms ago in the District of Columbia v. Heller, where the Court held that the Second Amendment protected the rights of individuals in D.C. to have firearms in their homes for protection. Because the district is a federal enclave, the Court in Heller did not decide whether the Second Amendment right applied to the states. Now, in McDonald, it does. A 5 justice majority finds the Second Amendment right is applicable to state and local governments. Suzanna, what was the majority's reasoning here? Well, Justice Alito wrote the opinion for the majority, and he used historical analysis to determine whether the rights that are protected by the Second Amendment are fundamental to our system of ordered liberty and therefore applicable against the state, and he said that the Heller case had already answered those questions, self-defense is a basic fundamental right, and it is the essential element or the core element of the Second Amendment. So it does apply to the states. Now, Justice Thomas agreed with the result, and he agreed with much of the majority's historical analysis, but he would not have gone with the Due Process Clause. He would have rested application of the Second Amendment to the states on the Privileges or Immunities Clause instead. So does this mean all gun regulation is unconstitutional? No, no, the Court was careful, as it was in Heller, to limit the right to handgun ownership for self-defense in the home. And it explicitly did not talk about whether there could be other limits on who could own guns or where they could have them and so on. Okay. What do you think the effect of this decision will be on the lower courts? I think this case opens the door to challenges in the federal courts to all sorts of state and local gun control laws. But, as you remember, the Court did not specify the standard of review-- the level of scrutiny to be used. The Court was clear, as Suzanna said, that the government can't ban all ownership or possession of handguns, especially in the home for purposes of self-defense. But beyond that, it's uncertain what regulation would be allowed. And I think it's important to note that the challenges have already begun. Not long after McDonald struck down the Chicago ordinance, Chicago adopted a new gun control law that had many parts. It said that people could only have one gun. It said that the gun has to be--if there's children in the home-- either with a trigger lock or in a locked box. It said that people, in order to have a gun, have to have training. And the challenge has already been brought to that law. Thank you. Our second federalism opinion, United States v. Comstock, explores the limits of congressional power. Under the Adam Walsh Child Protection Act of 2006, the U.S. Attorney General can request indefinite civil commitment of prisoners in the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons who have finished serving their criminal sentence. The prisoner must be found to be "sexually dangerous" by clear and convincing evidence in federal court and can have their commitment reviewed every 6 months to determine whether they should still be considered sexually dangerous. A number of prisoners who have been civilly committed under the Act challenged it constitutionally as a violation of their due process and equal protection rights, a violation of the Double Jeopardy and Ex Post Facto Clauses, and finally, for exceeding the powers granted to Congress under Article 1 section 8 of the Constitution. How did the Court respond to these arguments, Suzanna? The Court focused on the Article 1 section 8 question, and a 7 to 2 majority gave a very broad reading to the Necessary and Proper Clause. The Court says that a statute is constitutional under that clause if it's rationally related to the implementation of a constitutionally enumerated power, and the relationship can be quite attenuated. So, for example, in this case the Court found that the right to pass the underlying criminal statutes for which the defendants were incarcerated was implied from an enumerated power, although, interestingly, the Court didn't specify which enumerated power. And then the power to build and run prisons was implied from the power to pass the criminal statutes, and the power to civilly commit these defendants was implied from the power to run--to build and run prisons. So under the Necessary and Proper Clause, then, Congress did have the authority to put a civil hold on prisoners who were found to be sexually dangerous. And it's important to note that the Supreme Court focused only on the issue of federal power. In 1997, in Kansas v. Hendricks, the Supreme Court said that states can provide for the indefinite commitment of the sexually dangerous even if they complete their sentence. The Supreme Court said here it wasn't going to reconsider that ruling and remanded to the lower court for consideration of any other issues beyond the one it resolved, the scope of federal power. I think we also should note that the Court gave a very narrow reading to the Tenth Amendment and states' sovereignty. What the Court said is that the powers that are delegated to Congress, including by the Necessary and Proper Clause and including the implied powers, are not powers that are reserved to the states under the Tenth Amendment. The Court cited quite a few of the older Tenth Amendment decisions, and I think that's a signal that the Court is ... is not likely to expand the reach of the Tenth Amendment anytime soon. I agree. And I think that's very important. I think when constitutional historians look back at the Rehnquist Court they will say its greatest changes in the law were in the area of federalism, narrowing the scope of Congress's power, expanding the reach of the Tenth Amendment. Here at least the Robert's Court has shown that it doesn't want to go down that path. Thank you, Erwin. And thank you, Suzanna. Suzanna and I will be back in a moment with Evan Lee to look at some opinions regarding the power and jurisdiction of the federal courts. Hello. Evan Lee has joined Suzanna Sherry and me to talk about several decisions the justices reached this term regarding the authority and jurisdiction of the federal courts. In our first case, Wanda Krupski injured herself aboard a cruise ship owned by an Italian firm named Costa Crociere. When she sued to recover damages, however, she initially filed against the firm's U.S. subsidiary, Costa Cruises, in a diversity action in federal court. Costa Cruises tried 3 times to make Krupski aware of its Italian parent company. Finally, Krupski filed an amended complaint against Costa Crociere, but not until the statute of limitations period had expired. The question before the Supreme Court was whether the amended complaint related back to the original filing under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 15(c)(1)(C). Suzanna, did Krupski meet the requirements for that rule to allow the amended complaint to relate back? She did. There are 3 requirements under Rule 15(c) for an amended complaint to relate back. First, the amended claim has to arise out of the same set of facts as the original claim. Second, the newly named defendant has to have notice of the suit within 120 days, and finally--and this is the key question for the Court in this case--the new party has to know or should know that the action would have been brought against it, but for a mistake on the part of the plaintiff. So what was Costa Crociere arguing? The cruise line argued successfully in the lower courts that Krupski's amended complaint did not relate back because she knew of Costa Crociere's existence. I mean you have to remember that the U.S. subsidiary had told her of its existence 3 times and that she made a deliberate decision not to sue that company. And then the cruise line's fallback position was that even if she had not made a deliberate decision, but instead had, you know, made a mistake, she took so long to amend her complaint that it showed a lack of diligence on her part, and therefore that should prevent it from relating back. How did the Supreme Court respond to these arguments? They rejected them unanimously. The Court said that what Krupski knew or should have known was irrelevant to the question. What was important was what Costa Crociere knew or should have known-- that it did know or should have known, but for her mistake, it would have been named. Yeah, the Court said the amending party's mental status will sometimes be relevant, but only indirectly in that it may create the impression of mistake versus strategic maneuver in the mind of the party to be added to the suit. The Court found that the lower courts had been mistaken to focus on the plaintiff's mental state and conduct rather than the mental state of the party to be added. On the conduct question, the Court explicitly said that the plaintiff's diligence, or in this case lack of diligence, plays no role in determining whether an amended complaint relates back under the rule. The Court did add one very important caveat, though. The Court said that if a plaintiff, fully understanding the roles of all the various parties, chooses to sue one party rather than another, then that's not a mistake and the claim-- the new claim will not relate back. The Court didn't explain, though, whether this failure to relate back is because without a mistake Rule 15(c) is not applicable at all or because in those circumstances the defendant had no way of suspecting a mistake. If we could go back to the diligence question for just a second-- while diligence plays no part under Rule 15 in determining if an amended complaint relates back to the original complaint, the Court did say that diligence is a factor that courts can consider in deciding whether to allow an amendment at all under Rule 15 and the Court's decision in Foman v. Davis. So the district court in Krupski's case might have been within its discretion to simply deny her the right to amend at all. Thank you. Our next decision, Dolan v. United States, deals with restitution not in a civil but in a criminal case, and what happens with the victim's rights when the court misses a deadline. Brian Dolan pled guilty to a federal charge of physical assault that made restitution to his victim mandatory under federal law. But while noting in his judgment that Dolan had to pay restitution, the judge wrote that he lacked enough information to say how much Dolan owed and did not order it at that time. Chapter 18 of the U.S. Code section 3664(d)(5) requires that "the court shall set a date for the final determination of the victim's losses, not to exceed 90 days after sentencing." Nevertheless, the court scheduled a restitution hearing for a date about 3 months after the 90-day deadline expired. Neither side objected at the time, but at the hearing Dolan noted that the deadline had passed and that the law no longer authorized the court to order restitution. Evan, did the Supreme Court agree that the sentencing court no longer had jurisdiction to order restitution? No, the court had jurisdiction. The 5 justice majority held that missing that 90-day deadline does not deprive a sentencing court of the power to eventually order restitution, at least where the court had previously made it clear within that 90-day deadline that it would order restitution whenever that amount becomes available. Yeah, the Court divided--said that there were 3 different kinds of statutory deadlines. The first are the truly jurisdictional deadlines, and those are absolute. There's a second kind of deadline, which is a claims processing deadline, and those are forfeited by the non-claiming party if he or she fails to raise the objection in a timely manner. And then the third kind of directive is what the Court called a "time- related" directive, and those violations don't deprive the courts of the power to act. And the Court held that section 3664(d)(5) is one of these third kinds, a time-related directive. So the sentencing judge did not lose the power to order restitution just by missing the 90-day deadline. I see. In our next case, Mohawk Industries, Inc. v. Carpenter, the trial court may or may not have made a mistake, and the question was, who gets to decide? The specific question was whether court-ordered disclosure of information that a party claims is protected by attorney-client privilege is immediately appealable under the collateral order doctrine. Suzanna, there was a split among the circuits for this question prior to this decision, wasn't there? That's right. The Third, Ninth, and D.C. Circuits had allowed interlocutory appeals in these sorts of attorney-client privilege cases, but the Supreme Court in this case disagreed. It said that the purpose ... the Supreme Court said the purpose of the collateral order doctrine is to allow a review of interlocutory orders that were "otherwise unreviewable," and these kinds of orders didn't fit that characterization. The Court said also that the lack of an immediate appeal wasn't going to chill attorney-client communications because, first of all, the applicability of the privilege in any given case is always uncertain, and the--there's a distance in time between the disclosure and any appeal. And did the Court give other reasons not to extend the collateral order doctrine to this situation, Evan? Yeah, it did. It did. The Court said that counsel and the court had other options for dealing with this situation. One, appellate courts can remedy the improper disclosure of privileged material by vacating an adverse final judgment and then remanding for a new trial where the protected material and its fruits would be excluded from evidence. Two, the trial court could certify the interlocutory appeal under section 1292B. Three, the party can file a writ of mandamus. And four, the party could just ignore the order, which would be contempt and which is immediately appealable. So with all of these other avenues available, the justices didn't think it was necessary to enlarge the collateral order doctrine. And not enlarging the collateral order doctrine follows a trend in recent years. The Court's been very reluctant to add anything new to the collateral order doctrine, and in fact in this case the majority stressed that courts in general shouldn't expand the collateral order doctrine category, because that should be done by rule making instead. While all 9 justices concurred in Mohawk-- in the Mohawk Industries judgment, our next decision is one of those fractured opinions that make it harder to understand. The Shady Grove Orthopedic Association brought a state law class action suit under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23 against Allstate Insurance in federal court in the Southern District of New York. Its purpose was to recover statutory interest penalties for itself and others similarly situated. But New York's Civil Practice section 901(B) prohibits class actions to recover penalties. The question was, under the Erie Doctrine which rule controls, the state or the federal? Evan? The federal rule controls. But the problem was the justices couldn't exactly agree on why. You had a plurality of 4 justices, including the Chief Justice, Justice Scalia, Justice Thomas, and Justice Sotomayor. They reasoned that because state and federal laws conflicted and provided, you know, that Rule 23 "really regulates" procedure, then under the precedents, it governs. And they say that Rule 23, like all joinder devices, "really regulates procedure." And the other justices? Well the 4 dissenters, Justices Ginsburg, Kennedy, Breyer, and Alito, believed the issues of federalism compel an interpretation of section 901 that does not conflict with Rule 23 so that section 901 could continue to govern. That seems to leave Justice Stevens. Yes, it does. And his is probably the most important opinion. He concurred with the plurality but only in part. So he agreed for-- that Rule 23 conflicts with section 901, and then the question is what to do about it. He would not ask merely whether Rule 23 "really regulates procedure," the standard from Sibbach v. Wilson which was applied by the plurality. But he would also ask whether the state law was, in his words, "so bound up with" or "so interwoven with" state substantive rights that it should count as substantive. And if it does count as substantive, then Rule 23 can't displace it because the Rules Enabling Act, which authorizes the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure in the first place, prohibits rules from abridging, enlarging, or modifying any substantive right under state law. Ultimately, though, he agreed with the majority--he voted with--I'm sorry, with the plurality because he concluded that section 901 was not substantive in that sense. It wasn't bound up with substantive rights, so Rule 23 could govern. I think that his opinion is the narrowest, and so it should govern. Now, of course, with him leaving the court, there is an issue as to, you know, where the Erie doctrine is going to go from here. And in that sense, you know, that's not really out of line with the Court's set of, or series of, inconsistent rulings in this area over the last 20 years. Sometimes the Court has interpreted the federal rules broadly and created a conflict, and then sometimes it's interpreted them narrowly to avoid a conflict, and you're never really quite sure when it's going to do which of those two. Well, if the Shady Grove decision represents the Court searching for the right answer, our next decision might be seen as the justices returning to old certainties. In Hertz Corporation v. Friend, et al., the Court addresses that question familiar to every attorney who sat through civil procedure in law school: Where is a corporation's chief place of business for purposes of diversity in federal court? Evan, could you explain the issue for us? Well, old certainties indeed. In 1954, Judge Edward Weinfield created the "nerve center" test for truly national corporations, but that description didn't seem to apply to companies that only did business in a few states. So over the years the courts tried to improve on that formulation by creating various tests, including the "business activities" test, the "total activities" test, the "center of gravity" test, and the "locus of operations" test. So in this decision the Supreme Court returns to the "nerve center" test and defines it as "the place where the corporation's high level officers direct, control, and coordinate the corporation's activities." But the Court was careful to note that the principal place of business really has to be the nerve center. It can't just be a mailbox or a place where that board of directors meets for its annual meeting. And, of course, the burden is still on the parties seeking federal jurisdiction. So if the place--the principal place of business is challenged, the corporation has to come forward with evidence that this is its nerve center. Thank you. In our next case, Samantar v. Yousuf, immunity from federal law was the issue. The plaintiffs were Somali natives suing former Prime Minister Mohammed Al Samantar, charging that he failed to stop numerous murders and tortures by Somali armed forces during the 1980s. They sued under the Torture Victims Protection Act of 1991 and the Alien Tort Statute. What was Samantar's defense? He argued that he was immune from suit in U.S. court under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, which grants immunities--immunity to foreign states. And he argued that it should grant immunity to foreign officials as well. And did the Court agree with that interpretation? No. Justice Stevens wrote for the Court that in reading the text of the FSIA as a whole, interpreting the term "foreign state" to include officials would be really kind of nonsensical. And, moreover, he wrote that the legislative history of the Act points to an intent to leave official immunity outside the scope of the statute. Of course, we should note that the Court also said that even though he didn't have immunity under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, he might have some other defenses. So, for example, he might still have immunity under the common law that predated the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. Or a foreign state might be an indispensible party, in which case the case would have to be dismissed. Or perhaps if it's a suit against a foreign official acting in his official capacity seeking relief from the state, then that would be dismissed under the FSIA. So the Court had to remand to see whether there were any objections--other objections to jurisdiction. Our final discussion is also about a federal court's power to grant compensation, but this time it is not to the plaintiff or the defendant, but to the attorneys. In section 1983 civil rights cases, plaintiffs' attorneys who prevail are paid by the losing side based on what is called the "lodestar" method, which is the number of hours worked multiplied by the hourly rates prevailing in the community. Courts can grant the attorneys more than the lodestar amount for superior performance, but the question in this case is when? Suzanna, how did the question comes up in this case? Well, in this case the district court enhanced the lodestar amount by 75 percent because of the exceptional skill and efforts of the attorneys and also because of the financial risks that they took, and then the Eleventh Circuit affirmed this enhancement. And what did the Supreme Court hold? Well, they did approve enhancements in theory. Enhancements can be awarded, but only in extraordinary circumstances. And the Court found that the district court judge in this case didn't sufficiently document the existence of these extraordinary circumstances, so the Court had to remand for that documentation. I see. Did the Court give the lower court some guidance on how to make this type of a decision? Yes. The Court listed both the criteria for governing the award of fees and then some circumstances when those fees may be enhanced. It said that there's a strong presumption that the lodestar is adequate compensation, and as Suzanna said earlier, that enhancement is reserved for truly rare and exceptional cases. The Court said that the burden of proving the need for a fee enhancement is always on the fee applicant and that the applicant must produce specific evidence supporting the award. But the Court also cited some of the rare circumstances when an enhancement would be permitted. One was where the method used to determine the hourly rate was inadequate. Another would be where counsel was required to make an extraordinary outlay of expenses and then the litigation was exceptionally protracted. And a third would be where there's an exceptional delay in the payment of the fees. The Court also said that there has to be documentation and that the enhancement should be made in such a way as to allow meaningful appellate review. So the Court didn't rule out the possibility that the enhancement in this case might stand, but it remanded so that the district court could provide the documentation under the principles that it laid out in its opinion. Thank you, Suzanna, and thank you, Evan. We want to tell you about 2 more decisions in this area. The first is Lewis v. Chicago. Title 7 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits employers from using an employment practice that causes a disparate impact on a group of employees or potential employees because of race, among other factors. But it also requires plaintiffs bringing a disparate impact claim to file a timely charge of discrimination with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In Lewis v. City of Chicago, this term the Court held that a plaintiff who fails to file a timely charge of discrimination regarding the adoption of a discriminatory practice may still assert a disparate impact claim in a timely charge challenging the application of that practice as long as the employee alleges each of the elements of a disparate impact claim. Finally, in Rent-a-Center, West v. Jackson, the Court held that under the Federal Arbitration Act, when an agreement to arbitrate includes a clause stating that the arbitrator will determine the enforceability of the agreement, if a party challenges specifically the enforceability of that clause of the agreement the district court considers the challenge, but if the party challenges the enforceability of the agreement as a whole, as Jackson did here by charging the whole agreement as unconscionable, that challenge is for the arbitrator to decide. Finally, we have a number of decisions affecting attorney's fees in ERISA cases, bankruptcy law, and the kinds of inventions that can and cannot be patented. We'll start with the patent decision. The patent bar waited anxiously until the very last day of the term for the Court's decision in Bilski v. Kappos. The invention in question was a method that explains how buyers and sellers of commodities in the energy market can protect, or hedge, against the risk of price changes. The underlying question: Is such a method too abstract to be given patent protection? The case came to the Supreme Court from the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals. The court upheld the patent examiner's rejection of petitioner's application and ruled, more broadly, that the so-called "machine-or-transformation" test was the sole test to be used to determine the patentability of a process under the Patent Act. The Supreme Court overturned the ruling by the appellate court as a misreading of both the Patent Act and the Supreme Court's precedents in this area. "The machine-or-transformation test," it wrote, "is not the sole test for deciding whether an invention is a patent- eligible 'process.'" The majority opinion went on to say, "Section 101 similarly precludes a reading of the term 'process' that would categorically exclude business methods." But Professor John Thomas of the Georgetown Law Center doesn't think the Court necessarily clarified the issue. "Unfortunately, the Supreme Court didn't give us a lot of clues as to which sort of business methods could be patented and which ones could not. So the lower courts and the Patent Office will be left to use various tests from older Supreme Court cases to decide." Thomas believes that inventions like software, tax strategies, and genetic materials may still be able to obtain patents after the Court's ruling in this decision, but ... "I believe that the Bilski v. Kappos decision will engender a lot more litigation and in its search for more of a loosely defined standard rather than a more precise rule is going to leave a lot more room for clever lawyering and good patent drafting than the Federal Circuit's decision would have done." Clever lawyers and others who represent clients in ERISA claims will be interested in the Supreme Court's decision in Hardt v. Reliance Standard Insurance Company. Citing what it called the "plain text" of the statute, the Court rejected a Fourth Circuit decision. The appellate court held that in order to be awarded attorney's fees in an ERISA case, the movant had to be "a prevailing party." The Supreme Court held instead that a trial court may "in its discretion" award fees and costs "to either party" as long as the fee claimant had achieved "some degree of success on the merits." The Court also rejected as necessary the appellate court's use of a 5-factor test for determining if the award of attorney's fees in ERISA cases is appropriate. Paul Ondrasik, who has practiced ERISA law for more than twenty years, thinks the Court should have given the lower courts more guidance on how to exercise their discretion. "Certainly the plaintiff or the defendant will have to show that they have some degree of success on the merits, some non-trivial degree of success, before they will be eligible for an award, but then what happens next? If the courts go back to employing the same 5-factor standard they've used in the past, my guess is the decision will not have much impact. If they depart from that 5-factor test, I think all bets are off." Next we have 4 bankruptcy-related decisions we want to tell you about. Members of the bankruptcy bar got some good news and some not so good news from the Court in its decision in Milavetz, Gallop and Milavetz v. United States. The not so good news is that attorneys who provide bankruptcy assistance to their clients come under the definition and regulations of "debt relief agencies" in the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act, or BAPCPA. Bankruptcy attorneys were concerned that a BAPCPA provision applying to debt relief agencies would prohibit them from talking fully and candidly with their clients about incurring debt in contemplation of filing a bankruptcy case. So the good news is that the Court clarified that the provision only prohibits lawyers from advising clients to take on more debt solely because they're declaring bankruptcy rather than to take on debt for a valid purpose. The Court helped elucidate what might constitute valid purposes in a footnote to the decision. The Court also upheld BAPCPA provisions requiring certain disclosures by debt relief agencies as reasonably related to the government's interest in preventing the deception of consumers. The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, or FDCPA, imposes civil liability on debt collectors who use prohibited debt collection practices. But the statute provides that a debt collector is not liable under the Act if that person can show "the violation was not intentional and resulted from a bona fide error notwithstanding the maintenance of procedures reasonably adapted to avoid any such error." In Jarman v. Carlisle, this term the Supreme Court held that the bona fide error defense is not available for violations resulting from a debt collector's mistaken interpretation of the legal requirements of the FDCPA. When a debtor seeks to have student loan obligations discharged on the grounds of "undue hardship," the Bankruptcy Rules require that the court make its determination in an adversary proceeding initiated by the debtor. A bankruptcy court confirmed Francisco Espinosa's chapter 13 plan that proposed to discharge a portion of his student loans without first holding such a proceeding and without first making an undue hardship finding. The creditor received notice of the plan but did not object to it, nor to Espinosa's failure to initiate the required proceeding. It also didn't file a timely appeal after the court confirmed the plan. When the creditor later sought to collect the discharged debt, Espinosa asked the bankruptcy court to enforce its final judgment and tell the creditor to cease any collection efforts. The creditor, in turn, moved that the final judgment be set aside as void under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b)(4) because the court had not made the undue hardship finding nor held the required adversary proceeding and because the creditor's due process rights were violated when Espinosa failed to serve it with the required summons and complaint. In United Student Aid Funds, Inc. v. Espinosa, the Supreme Court held that the bankruptcy court's confirmation order was not void under Rule 60(b)(4). The Court wrote that 60(b)(4) allows a party to seek relief from a judgment that is void only in the rare instance where a judgment is premised either on a certain type of jurisdictional error or on a violation of due process that deprives a party of notice or the opportunity to be heard. The bankruptcy court's error fell into neither category, said the Court. Espinosa's failure to serve United with a summons and complaint denied it a right granted by a procedural rule. The deprivation did not amount to a deprivation of due process, since United had actual notice of Espinosa's plan. So what the Supreme Court calls the legal error of the bankruptcy court in failing to make the hardship determination did not entitle United to relief under 60(b)(4). Notably, however, the Court reaffirmed the bankruptcy court's responsibility to make an independent determination of undue hardship before a plan is confirmed, and disavowed the Ninth Circuit's view that the bankruptcy court must confirm a plan proposing the discharge of a student loan without a determination of undue hardship in an adversary proceeding, unless the creditors file a timely objection. It also noted that the penalties faced by debtors and attorneys for unscrupulous litigation conduct should deter bad faith attempts to discharge student loan debts without the required findings and procedures. Finally, in Hamilton v. Lanning the Supreme Court provided bankruptcy courts with some greater leeway in determining a debtor's projected disposable income when confirming Chapter 13 plans. Resolving a split between the circuits, the justices ruled that the bankruptcy court did not have to "solely" use the so-called "mechanical approach," calculating current monthly income by averaging the debtor's income during a six-month "look-back" period and then multiplying it minus reasonable necessary expenses by the number of months in the plan. Instead, the High Court said, bankruptcy judges may take into account changes in the debtor's income or expenses that are known or virtually certain at the time of confirmation. That's it for this portion of our program. Now here is John Cooke. That's our program for this year. We hope you found it interesting and useful. Please take the time to fill in the evaluation form that's included with the written materials that are at our website. It's the only way for us to know how we can improve this program and make it even more useful for you in your work for the courts. I want to thank our faculty for helping us explore and explain these important topics and all the people here at the FJC who were responsible for this program. I'm John Cooke. Thank you for watching.

See also

References

Further reading

  • Liptak, Adam (March 3, 2010), "Supreme Court Weighs Lawsuit Over Torture in Somalia", New York Times.
  • Liptak, Adam (June 1, 2010), "Mere Silence Doesn't Invoke Miranda, Justices Say", New York Times.

External links


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