Options for Biden’s Supreme Court Reform Commission

MICHAEL C. DORF

Cornell law professor Michael C. Dorf explores several options that Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden should consider if he wins the election and fulfills his proposal of convening a bipartisan commission of constitutional scholars to study and recommend court reforms. Dorf discusses the benefits and limitations of each option and describes how Congress and a President Biden could implement meaningful court reform that could withstand review by the Supreme Court itself.

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Bliss v. CoreCivic, Inc.

Docket: 19-16167

Opinion Date: October 27, 2020

Judge: Danielle J. Hunsaker

Areas of Law: Civil Rights, Constitutional Law, Criminal Law

Plaintiff filed suit against CoreCivil under the Wiretap Act, alleging that CoreCivic unlawfully recorded privileged telephone calls between herself and her clients who were detained in CoreCivic's detention facility in Nevada. The Ninth Circuit held that the only reasonable interpretation based on both the text and context of the Act is that "the violation" refers to each separate interception, whether the interception is a singular event or part of a larger pattern of conduct. Therefore, each interception of plaintiff's privileged telephone calls is a separate violation of the Act, and the statute of limitations is triggered anew for each call that CoreCivic recorded. The panel held that the district court correctly determined that the Act's two-year statute of limitations was first triggered when plaintiff received discovery in June 2016 that contained recordings of her privileged telephone calls. In this case, the undisputed facts establish that plaintiff had such notice of recordings made before June 27, 2016, when she received discovery from the government on that date that included recorded calls. Accordingly, the panel affirmed the district court's holding that plaintiff's claims are untimely to the extent they are based on interceptions that occurred before June 27, 2016. However, to the extent her claims are based on calls that were recorded after this date, the timeliness of such claims depends on when she first had a reasonable opportunity to discover that such calls were recorded. The panel remanded to the district court for further analysis.

Cortesluna v. Leon

Docket: 19-15105

Opinion Date: October 27, 2020

Judge: Susan P. Graber

Areas of Law: Civil Rights, Constitutional Law

Plaintiff appealed the district court's grant of summary judgment entered in favor of defendants in an action alleging that the individual defendants used excessive force in effecting plaintiff's arrest. The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court's grant of summary judgment to Defendant Leon and held that, even taking plaintiff's version of the facts as true, a reasonable jury would not find a Fourth Amendment violation because Leon's acts were objectively reasonable in the circumstances. In this case, a 12 year old girl called 911 to report that her mother's boyfriend had threatened her and her family with a chainsaw and that she and her family were currently hiding from him in a bedroom that he was trying to enter; Leon faced an immediate threat; plaintiff had a knife in his pocket and had lowered his hands towards the knife when the first shot came from the beanbag shotgun; and plaintiff's hands remained near the knife in his pocket at the time of the second beanbag shot. The panel reversed the district court's grant of summary judgment in favor of Defendant Rivas-Villegas where there was a genuine issue of fact as to whether the force that Rivas-Villegas used when he kneeled on plaintiff's back when he was lying face down on the ground was excessive. The panel affirmed the district court's summary judgment in favor of Defendant Kensic where Kensic lacked any realistic opportunity to intercede or to stop the excessive force. The panel remanded for the district court to consider plaintiff's Monell claim and state law claims.