A lot has been written and — during arguments at the Supreme Court Tuesday — said about the federal “honest services” fraud statute.  The big problem is that it’s so vague, perhaps enough to make it unconstitutional.  In fact, as your blogger found out by experimenting on Twitter (see Twitter feed to the right), the statute is so brief it can fit into two 140-character tweets. So, in its defense, it is perhaps the most 21st century of statutes.

Justice Breyer doesn't wear a wig or fancy robes

Your blogger recently interviewed Justice Stephen G. Breyer about the U.K. Supreme Court. The justice attended the court’s opening ceremony in October. The resulting article is in today’s Daily Journal (subscribers only).

Here’s a taster:

DJ: Did the British justices have their ceremonial robes on?

Breyer: They were wearing ceremonial robes.

DJ: How did you like the robes they have? They are considerably more ornate than yours.

Breyer: Well they have gold in them. We have plain black robes. We were not wearing robes. Most of the other countries have elaborate robes. We did not wear robes at all. We normally don’t wear robes when we’re not in court.

DJ: Did you get any fashion tips? No ermine or anything?

Breyer: None we are going to adopt. I think I said to someone – he said: “Why don’t you have robes?” I said: “We fought a revolution against that.” And he said: “Well, that was rather bad luck for you.”

DJ: The U.K. justices are not wearing wigs any more though.

Breyer: I guess they are not. We have never worn wigs. Perhaps that would be a benefit to me as I don’t have much hair.

This BBC story about a U.K. Supreme Court ruling includes TV footage of the chief justice reading a summary of the court’s opinion. As readers are aware, the U.S. Supreme Court allows no cameras in the courtroom at any time.

Are you watching, Chief Justice Roberts and company?

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Justice Kennedy

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy clearly wasn’t happy with last week’s New York Times story in which the paper’s Supreme Court reporter, Adam Liptak, revealed that Kennedy’s office had asked a school newspaper to show him a copy of an article before it could be published.

In an interview published today in the Wall Street Journal, written by its Supreme Court reporter, Jess Bravin, Kennedy condemned Liptak’s article as a “stupid story” while admitting that a new employee in his office had “misunderstood” his usual policy of barring outside media from classroom events but allowing school media to attend.

Kennedy spoke to students during a visit to posh New York school Dalton. The story about the restrictions imposed on the school newspaper ran on the front page of the New York Times. For the record, the Wall Street Journal story ran on page six.

It’s not every day that individual lawyers get a ringing endorsement from the U.S. Supreme Court. But that’s what happened to Stockton, Calif.-based defense lawyer John Schick yesterday. In a per curiam opinion, the court stated decisively that Schick was not guilty of inneffective assistance of counsel when he represented convicted murderer Fernando Belmontes at trial almost 30 years ago.

In a report in today’s Daily Journal (subscribers only), your blogger asked Schick how he felt about the ruling and the 9th Circuit opinion by Judge Stephen Reinhardt, which the justices summarily reversed.  This is what he said:

Schick, Belmontes’ former lawyer, said in an interview Monday he wasn’t surprised by the Supreme Court decision due to obvious flaws in Reinhardt’s reasoning.

“It was not a really well reasoned opinion,” he said. “He [Reinhardt] may not have been thinking as clearly as he should have been.”

As for his original mitigation strategy, Schick conceded that it was “nice to know that the highest court in the land agrees with me.”

He also revealed that Belmontes had been offered a plea bargain before going to trial but had refused a sentence of life without parole in part because a death sentence offers the possibility of “a lot more appeal action.”

The Supreme Court has repeatedly endorsed the concept that “death is different.” The phrase — and various versions of it — took center stage at today’s double-header argument on juvenile life without parole (Graham v. Florida and Sullivan v. Florida).
Everyone involved wanted a piece of it.
The famous “death is different” phrase was uttered by no fewer than three justices (Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., Justice Antonin Scalia and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.) as well as defendant Terrance Graham’s attorney. Several variations on the theme also came up, reflecting the weighty issues the justices were addressing:
“Juveniles are different,” said Roberts.
“Kids are different,” added the lawyer for juvenile defendant Joe Sullivan.
“Murder is different,” chimed in Graham’s lawyer.
“Adolescents are different,” he added in response to a question from Roberts.
Whether or not life without parole for a juvenile convicted of a non-homicide offense is sufficiently “different” to be found unconstitutional remains to be seen.

Last week, the Supreme Court stopped the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals from authorizing the release of the names of people who signed a petition to put Referendum 71, Washington state’s equivalent of Proposition 8, on the November ballot. If it passes the ballot initiative would repeal the state’s recently passed same sex domestic partnership law.

Stephen Colbert takes it up here.

Her Majesty

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia and Stephen G. Breyer also had the chance to chat with a bunch of judges from other countries, including the top judges from France, Germany and other European countries. Also in attendance were chief justices from various remote areas with British links, such as the Falkland Islands and the Pitcairn Islands.

Video is available here, although none of the U.S. contingent appeared to have speaking roles.

The U.S. Supreme Court public information office just issued a release stating that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was hospitalized again Wednesday night after “an apparent adverse reaction to a sleeping aid combined with cold medication” that she took before boarding a flight to London. The justice “experienced extreme drowsiness causing her to fall from her seat,” the release said. She was taken to Washington Hospital Center “as a precaution” and, after staying overnight, was released this morning.

Ginsburg was on her way to London for the official opening of the new U.K. Supreme Court along with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., Justice Stephen G. Breyer and Justice Antonin Scalia. Breyer was the only one of the other justices to be on the same flight. He disembarked with Ginsburg but then took a later flight to London, according to the court.

This is the second time in the last month that Ginsburg, who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer early this year, has been hospitalized.