How Mike Huckabee and Robert Bork Could Help Center Neil Gorsuch

SHERRY F. COLB

Cornell law professor Sherry F. Colb analyzes an unusual comment by former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee that a government restriction on the size of people’s Thanksgiving gathering would violate the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee against unreasonable searches and seizures. Colb describes a similar statement (in a different context) by conservative Supreme Court nominee Robert H. Bork during his (unsuccessful) confirmation hearings in 1987 and observes from that pattern a possibility that even as unenumerated rights are eroded, the Court might be creative in identifying a source of privacy rights elsewhere in the Constitution.

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Nance v. Commissioner, Georgia Department of Corrections

Docket: 20-11393

Opinion Date: December 2, 2020

Judge: William Holcombe Pryor, Jr.

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

Plaintiff filed suit under 42 U.S.C. 1983, alleging that Georgia's lethal injection protocol, as applied to his unique medical situation, violates the Eighth Amendment and that the firing squad is a readily available alternative. At issue was whether a method-of-execution claim that would have the necessary effect of preventing the prisoner's execution should be brought as a civil rights action under section 1983, or as a petition for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. 2254. The Eleventh Circuit vacated the district court's order dismissing the complaint as untimely and held that a section 1983 claim for relief that would prevent a state from executing a prisoner under present law must be reconstrued as a habeas petition. Because plaintiff's requested relief would prevent the State from executing him, implying the invalidity of his death sentence, it is not cognizable under section 1983 and must be brought in a habeas petition. Furthermore, because the petition is second or successive, the court vacated and remanded with instructions to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction. In this case, plaintiff did not move this court for permission to file his petition and thus the district court lacked jurisdiction.

United States v. Johnson

Docket: 19-10915

Opinion Date: December 2, 2020

Judge: Rosenbaum

Areas of Law: Criminal Law

Recently, in Rehaif v. United States, 139 S. Ct. 2191, 2194 (2019), the Supreme Court clarified that a domestic-violence misdemeanant does not violate the prohibition on firearm possession if he does not know he is a domestic violence misdemeanant at the time he possesses a gun. The Eleventh Circuit concluded that a person knows he is a domestic violence misdemeanant, for Rehaif purposes, if he knows all the following: (1) that he was convicted of a misdemeanor crime; (2) that to be convicted of that crime, he must have engaged in at least "the slightest offensive touching;" United States v. Castleman, 572 U.S. 157, 163 (2014), and (3) that the victim of his misdemeanor crime was, as relevant here, his wife. In this case, the record establishes that defendant knew all of these things at the time he was found in possession of a gun. Therefore, the court rejected defendant's challenge to his conviction for being a domestic-violence misdemeanant while possessing a firearm and affirmed the conviction. The court also found no merit in defendant's equal protection and Commerce Clause arguments.