Source: http://markrubinwrites.com/category/general-legal/page/4/
Timestamp: 2019-04-24 02:20:42+00:00

Document:
The U.S. Supreme Court; It’s a Wrap!
On Monday, June 27, the U.S. Supreme Court issued decisions in Voisine et al. v. United States, No. 14-10154; Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, No. 15-274; and McDonnell v. United States, No. 15-474. With these decisions, the oddest Term in this writer’s memory is a wrap!
I was in a meeting recently. Some legal topics came up. The people with whom I was meeting—non-attorneys—knew the subject, but we all knew there might be misunderstandings, as laws, or law and lore, get confused. Here are three examples.
Right-to-Work and At-Will Employment. People—even an attorney or two—confuse these concepts. How? Read on.
Family law was never my thing. Alas, we don’t often know how life will turn out. About 15 years ago my practice focus shifted much more heavily into probate and estate planning. And probate, it turns out, is family law without the divorces, mostly.
Most probate matters—no good stats, but far more than 90% is my best estimate—get processed easily, quickly, and for a few thousand dollars. Then there are the outliers, which almost always have in common: (a) a dysfunctional family; and (b) deceased or demented parents. Sometimes, there’s lots of money or complicated assets, but in plenty of cases an inverse relationship exists between value and the intensity of the battle.
Donald J. Trump has taken out after U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who happens to be the judge in Low, et al. v. Trump University, LLC, et al. and Cohen v. Donald J. Trump. The basic facts, for anyone who hasn’t been following the situation, are laid out well in Why Is Donald Trump So Angry at Judge Gonzalo Curiel?, written for The Atlantic on June 3, 2015 by Matt Ford.
The 150th anniversary of the Civil War (five years ago), Memorial Day (which tracks back to Decoration Day, dedicated to honoring those who died in the Civil War) and the notion that Donald Trump might be our 45th President of the United States of America, brought to mind Abraham Lincoln. Before he went to work for the federal government in 1861, Mr. Lincoln was a very accomplished attorney. Notes for a Law Lecture, dated July 1, 1850, may or may not have been used in a lecture, but they have survived for more than 165 years.
The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument earlier today in United States v. Texas, No. 15-674. Texas and 25 other states sued the federal government to prevent the implementation of deferred-action regarding certain undocumented immigrants.
Lyle Denniston has an excellent overview of the case and the oral argument in Oral Argument: Search for a Fifth Vote on Immigration at SCOTUSblog. And, of course, Nina Totenberg is always worth reading and listening to; her piece, with a byline shared with Eyder Peralta for NPR, is On Obama’s Immigration Actions, Supreme Court Seems Sharply Divided.
I’m about to dis the U.S. Constitution. It’s a Constitution I swore to support on October 17, 1981 and implicitly, on each and every one of the following 12,602 days. To be clear, given that I live in Arizona, a state which seems hell bent on challenging Kansas for Most Effed Up State trophy, I support the U. S. Constitution so long as it remains in place.
Arizona faces a Constitutional amendment—Arizona Education Finance Amendment aka Proposition 123—which addresses school funding next month. And the entire nation finds itself in the midst of what might be called a democratic revolution, as “the people” have decided not to go along/get along, at least in the Republican Party. I have some thoughts.
Yesterday, in an 8-0 decision, the Court affirmed the decision of a three-judge panel, holding that Texas need not have state legislative redistricting maps based on voters, as opposed to people. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote the opinion for the Court. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito concurred in the judgment.
The decision represents good news for Democrats and those who believe many voices should be heard. But it’s not especially bad news for the other side.

References: v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v.