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Top Legal News Stories of 2005

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published January 09, 2006

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( 5 votes, average: 4.1 out of 5)
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The survey included opinions and comments from 68 authors and attorneys, all of whom are experts in their specific areas of legal practice or study.

The report on this survey predicts that the ideological changes on the U.S. Supreme Court will affect justices for decades.


The death of U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and the retirement of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor left two open seats on the court, and President Bush’s nominations sparked a national debate about conservatism in his administration and in federal courts.

Thomson West’s experts predict that the new court will tend clearly to the right; personal liberties and rights may be curtailed or lost; and although individual votes will be impossible to predict, the changes on the court will influence the nation for years to come.

Paul Rothstein, a professor of law at Georgetown University, agrees with these statements, but also notes, “Sometimes justices prove to be a surprise and don't do what was expected of them.

“In the not-too-distant past, Justices Warren, Brennan, Souter, and Stevens were all nominated by presidents who expected them to be quite conservative, and yet it is hard to find a more liberal bunch than these justices proved to be.”

Rothstein says there are several reasons for this apparent change in attitude.

“Once nominees become justices, they are exposed to both sides of an issue in thorough, high-quality briefs. Their life tenure frees them from political forces and the need to please or advocate for a particular boss, interest, party, or client. Consequently, they often recognize more complexity in issues and feel freed to do what they genuinely and independently think is right.”

However, even with these considerations, Rothstein believes that the court will tend moderately toward the right, especially if President Bush’s latest nominee, Samuel Alito, is confirmed.

Rothstein believes that the new chief justice, John G. Roberts, Jr., was “a great choice.” He reserves judgment on Alito, but concurs with most judicial experts that the president’s nomination of Harriet Meiers, White House counsel and Bush’s personal lawyer, “was a terrible choice.”

Itself one of the biggest Supreme Court stories of the year, Meiers’ nomination caused an uproar in the legal and political community as well as the national media.

“She had little or no exposure to the great national legal issues the Supreme Court gets involved in, except perhaps very recently in the White House,” said Rothstein.

“Her nomination seemed to be ill-considered cronyism. As kids, we used to sometimes choose kids to be on our team because they were our friend and happened to walk by at the time. By the time of the Harriet Meiers nomination, the president seemed to be tired of Supreme Court nominations or tired and distracted by the other important issues and developments in his presidency. He apparently had a bad lapse and resorted to cronyism, something like what must have happened before Katrina in connection with heading up FEMA.”

Although the new chief justice and the president’s questionable choice of nominees dominated headlines, Thomson West’s authors said that the Kelo v. City of New London decision was the court’s most important case in 2005. This decision “ruled that municipalities can use eminent domain to seize private property in order to turn it over to a private developer.”

According to the report, Subdivision Law & Growth Management author James Kushner said that both state and federal governments are “free to enact legislation to restrict use of eminent domain to seize property for private development. Many states had done so even before the Kelo decision, and other states are now considering such a move.”

Kushner stated, “Many people mistakenly believed the ruling would lead to wholesale condemnation of people’s homes to benefit private developers, but the court ruled any such taking of private property has to be part of a comprehensive development plan that provides appreciable economic benefits to the community.”

Many are concerned that states and Congress will interpret the ruling inappropriately, blocking certain domain uses to an extent that would obstruct cities' economic growth.

Aside from Kelo v. New London, other Supreme Court cases considered significant by the surveyed group were U.S. v. Booker; NCTA v. Brand X Internet Services; MGM Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd.; and Rasul v. Bush.

The Booker case examined the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and found them to be in violation of the Sixth Amendment. In its opinion, the court stated that juries should form the basis for sentencing and that the Guidelines should thereafter be considered only in an advisory sense.

In NCTA v. Brand X Internet Services, the court gave the green light to broadband development in the U.S. by supporting the FCC’s light regulatory touch; however, some worry that the ruling could stifle competition in the ISP market.

Unlawful peer-to-peer file sharing saw a decline after the court’s ruling in Grokster, and Rasul v. Bush allowed illegally imprisoned foreign nationals at the Guantanamo Bay camps to challenge their captivity in U.S. courts.

Other important cases in federal courts dealt with enemy combatants. Same-sex relationships and surrounding issues played a significant role in state and federal courts in 2005.

Without a doubt, the case of Terri Schiavo spurred one of the most tense, polarized debates in the year. Comprehensively covered by U.S. media, the case ended with the decision to allow doctors to disconnect the feeding tube of a brain-damaged Florida woman.

The experts were also asked to identify decided and pending cases that would have the greatest potential to affect certain areas of practice; in addition to the Booker and Kelo cases, these authors cited class-action reform and abortion rights as possibly having larger influences on legal practice than in previous years.
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published January 09, 2006

( 5 votes, average: 4.1 out of 5)
What do you think about this article? Rate it using the stars above and let us know what you think in the comments below.

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