ACSBlog: The Blog of the American Constitution Society

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear argument in five cases this week. Video of ACS' Preview of the 2007-2008 Supreme Court Term is available in ACS' Multimedia Library.

Monday, Oct. 29

• Klein v. Bd. Of Trade (commodities futures trading market)
• Ali v. Fed. Bureau of Prisons (scope of FTCA waiver of sovereign immunity)

 Tuesday, Oct. 30

• U.S. v. Williams (validity of anti-simulated child pornography pandering law)
• Logan v. U.S. (whether action counts towards sentence enhancement)

 Wednesday, Oct. 31

• Danforth v. Minnesota (whether state courts may apply broader retroactivity standards than the supreme court)

 Questions Presented are below the fold.

Klein v. Bd. Of Trade

The Commodity Exchange Act provides an express private right of action for actual losses to a person who “engaged in any transaction on” or “subject to the rules of” a commodity board of trade against that board of trade if the board, in bad faith, engaged in illegal conduct that caused the person to suffer the actual losses, 7 U.S.C. § 25(b)(1).

The question presented is:

Whether the court of appeals erred in concluding that futures commission merchants lack statutory standing to invoke that right of action because, in the court’s view, they do not engage in such transactions, despite the statutory requirement that the merchants enter into and execute their transactions on, and subject to the rules of, a board of trade and the fact of the merchants’ financial liability for the transactions.

Ali v. Federal Bureau of Prisons

Under 28 U.S.C. 2680(c), the Federal Tort Claims Act’s waiver of sovereign immunity does not extend to “[a]ny claim arising in respect of * * * the detention of any goods, merchandise, or other property by any officer of customs or excise or any other law enforcement officer.” The question presented, over which ten circuits are divided six—to—four is: Whether the term “other law enforcement officer” is limited to officers acting in a tax, excise, or customs capacity.

U.S. v. Williams

Section 2252A(a)(3)(B) of Title 18 (Supp. IV 2004) prohibits “knowingly * * * advertis[ing], promot[ing], present[ing], distribut[ing], or solicit[ing] * * * any material or purported material in a manner that reflects the belief, or that is intended to cause another to believe, that the material or purported material” is illegal child pornography.

The question presented is whether Section 2252A(a)(3)(B) is overly broad and impermissibly vague, and thus facially unconstitutional.

Logan v. U.S.

Whether the “civil rights restored” provision of 18 U.S.C. §921(a)(20) applies to a conviction for which a defendant was not deprived of his civil rights thereby precluding such a conviction as a predicate offense under the Armed Career Criminal Act, 18 U.S.C. §924(e)(1)?

Danforth v. Minnesota

1. Are state supreme courts required to use the standard announced in Teague v. Lane, 489 U.S. 288 (1989), to determine whether United States Supreme Court decisions apply retroactively to state-court criminal cases, or may a state court apply state-law- or state-constitution-based retroactivity tests that afford application of Supreme Court decisions to a broader class of criminal defendants than the class defined by Teague?

2. Did Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004), announce a “new rule of constitutional criminal procedure,” as Teague defines that phrase and, if it did, was it a watershed rule of procedure subject to full retroactive application?