Pro-Gun Justices Announce Their Agenda While the Supreme Court Bides It Time on Gun Rights

AUSTIN SARAT

Austin Sarat—Associate Provost, Associate Dean of the Faculty and William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College—comments on yesterday’s decision by the U.S. Supreme Court deferring deciding on a Second Amendment issue presented by a New York City law that prohibited gun owners from transporting their guns out of the city. Sarat points out that the issue that divided the Court’s conservative justices in this case was not whether to radically expand the protections of the Second Amendment, but when and how to do so.

Read More

Perez v. Barr

Docket: 16-71918

Opinion Date: April 27, 2020

Judge: Consuelo Maria Callahan

Areas of Law: Immigration Law

The Ninth Circuit denied petitioner's request for compensation at government expense of his court-appointed pro bono counsel in a petition for review of the BIA's denial of relief from removal. The panel held that petitioner and his amici curiae identify no authority, including under the federal habeas statutes, the All Writs Act, and the Criminal Justice Act, as informed by the Suspension Clause, allowing the panel to order the government to compensate counsel for mentally incompetent petitioners in petitions for review under 8 U.S.C. 1252(a). The panel stated that, although it has inherent authority to appoint pro bono counsel for petitioner, and did so in his petition for review, it lacked the requisite statutory authority to order government compensation for his appointed counsel.