The Supreme Court has taken a step to keep the 4th Amendment from going to the dogs. It ruled today that police may not use the fruits of a warrantless dog search at the front door to a residence as probable cause for a search warrant. The case is Jardines v. Florida and the opinion, written by Justice Scalia, is here.

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Andrew Cohen at The Atlantic has an excellent article on the impact of the sequester on the federal judiciary. Already there are layoffs and furloughs at federal defenders' offices and courts are reducing staff. Law enforcement is also taking a hit.

The Federal Times reports 21,000 court employees could be affected.

U.S. marshals, who furnish courthouse security, and federal prosecutors face furloughs of up to 14 days by the end of September.

There are some exemptions: "Like members of Congress, judges cannot be furloughed. Also exempted are law clerks and other “chambers” staff employees."

The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision written by Justice Alito, today ruled civil rights groups and lawyers representing Guantanamo detainees lacked standing to challenge the 1998 FISA Amendment that allowed their overseas conversations and e-mails to be intercepted. The case is Clapper v. Amnesty International, the opinion is here.

Split 5-4 on ideological lines, with conservatives backing the government and the liberal wing in the minority, the country's highest court said none of the three categories, including human rights groups Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have legal standing to sue because they could not show they had suffered any injury.

The ACLU, which filed the lawsuit, says: [More...]

The Supreme Court today issued its opinion in Florida v. Harris, ruling that extensive reliability evidence is not necessary for probable cause for a dog search. The opinion is here.

Justice Elena Kagan said the Florida court had gone too far, and suggested that proper training and certification of the dog — rather than how it has performed in the field — might be enough for law enforcement’s purposes.

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Update: Transcript of argument in Florida v. Jardines is here, and Florida v. Harris here. Washington Post recap here.

Will the Supreme Court keep the 4th Amendment from going to the dogs?

The Supreme Court held two hours of oral argument today on the constitutionality of using drug-sniffing dogs at private homes, and the reliability of the dogs. Background here and at Scotus Blog here. Wired reports here, and the LA Times here.

Upholding ACA, laying groundwork to strike down New Deal

Yesterday, a happy day for many of us, where the Affordable Care Act was upheld in a 5-4 decision (PDF) authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, there is a dark cloud attached. The Chief Justice accepted the federal government's argument that Congress had exercised its taxing power in enacting the mandate. But rather than being a judicial minimalist and deciding only those constitutional questions that must be decided, the Roberts Court bulled on to decide issues that need not have been addressed—whether the mandate exceeded the Congress' Commerce and Necessary and Proper power.

And the Roberts opinion on the scope of the national government's power to address national problems is a shot across the bow to the Supreme Court's New Deal jurisprudence that underpins our modern national government.

(Continue reading below the fold)

The opinion is here.

Here'a a new thread to discuss the Supreme Court decision and related topics. (I haven't read it yet, I just got out of court. I'll chime in later, I'm sure.)

BTD - Radio most of the day but I promise to discuss ACA here at Talk Left tomorrow if anyone is still interested.

BTD will be on the radio (please join him), and I'll be getting ready for court when the Supreme Court releases its historic decision on the Affordable Care Act. The decision will be available on the court's website.

According to C-Span, these are the four issues:

• Whether the court has jurisdiction over a tax law that has yet to take effect,
• Whether the individual mandate is constitutional,
• Whether the court can strike down only part of the law without striking down the law in its entirety,
• And whether the law's extension of Medicaid is constitutional.

Put even simpler, the decision will address jurisdiction, the individual mandate, the fate of the rest of the law — and separately, the Medicaid provision.

For the legal-minded among you, check out ScotusBlog. It's plain English version (which maybe should be called plain English for lawyers) is here. Here are some potential scenarios in plain English as to the effects of the ruling should it go one way or the other.

Here's a thread to discuss all aspects of the decision and the potential effects -- legal, economic, political, and personal.

Thursday morning, starting at 9 am ET, Daily Kos Radio will be presenting live coverage and reaction to the Supreme Court's momentous decision on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act. You can listen here. We'll be taking calls as well (Skype calls preferred.) What we'll be talking about - via Adam B:

I think Andrew Koppelman gets it in one paragraph:

The philosophy they relied upon, which I’ll call Tough Luck Libertarianism, holds that property rights are absolute and any redistribution to care for the sick violates those rights. If you’re sick, and you can’t afford to pay for medical care with your own money, that’s your tough luck. The judges’ willingness to read this notion into the Constitution is very big news, dwarfing even the fate of the ACA, which is itself the most important social legislation in decades.

Unsurprisingly, Randy Barnett touts Charles Lane's unconcern that the New Deal jurisprudence will be overturned. Lane writes:

What, then, led the [liberal] academics to misread this [ACA] case [sic]? In a sense, they resemble the conservative leaders of the bar at the dawn of the New Deal. President Franklin Roosevelt’s alphabet soup of federal programs ran counter to established doctrine denying the constitutionality of economic and social legislation, state or federal. Steeped in that tradition, many legal experts recoiled in horror at FDR’s plans.

Amid a Great Depression, and under tremendous pressure from a popular president and his huge congressional majority, however, this expert consensus gave way. The Supreme Court abandoned its laissez faire understanding of the Constitution’s Commerce Clause (among other provisions) so as to permit New Deal programs.

Lane seems to believe our Constitutional history began during the Lochner Era. McCulloch v. Maryland? Never heard of it says Lane. Gibbons v. Ogden? What's that says Lane. But forget all that.

Lane (and Barnett) are happy to see the New Deal jurisprudence overturned. This is the conservative project. This is the Constitution in Exile movement. Janice Rogers Brown explained it clearly and forthrightly (PDF):

For those who may have missed it, I wrote a number of posts on the challenge to the Affordable Care Act. Here are links to some of them:

Bloomberg: 'Obama health law seen valid, scholars expect rejection'

The SCOTUS: Is an extreme constitutional winter coming?

What's at stake: The SCOTUS and undoing The New Deal

Prof. Jack Balkin on 'Living Originalism' and the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act

The contorted contours of Congressional power according to the radical Roberts Court

When The Court Said Congress Could Regulate "Inactivity"

Supreme Court: Is the mandate severable from Affordable Care Act? Is Medicaid expansion permitted?

Supreme Court, Affordable Care Act: Is the mandate constitutional?

One perspective regarding the Supreme Court and the Affordable Care Act