Cases for Team Project

  1. No. 99-423: ALSBROOK, CHRISTOPHER v. ARKANSAS, ET AL. (USAP8) Whether the ADA was a proper exercise of the power granted to Congress by 5 of the Fourteeth Amendment to the United States Constitution such that the immunity granted to the State of Arkansas by the Eleventh Amendment to the United States Constitution was abrogated.
  2. No. 98-9349: BOND, STEVEN D. v. UNITED STATES (USAP5) Whether a search occurs when a law enforcement officer manipulates a bus passenger's personal carry-on luggage to determine its contents.
  3. No. 99-699: BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA, ET AL v. DALE, JAMES (NJSC) Whether a state law requiring a Boy Scout Troop to appoint an avowed homosexual and gray rights activist as an Assistant Scoutmaster responsible for communicating Boy Scouting's moral values to youth members abridges First Amendment rights of freedom of speech and freedom of association. Carolan and Molter
  4. No. 99-401: CA DEMOCRATIC PARTY, ET AL. v. JONES, CA SEC. OF STATE (USCA9) Whether California's new blanket primary law-- which allows voters of any political affiliation to cross party lines at will and to participate in the selection of other parties nominees-- violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. Whether the associational rights of political parties are afforded less protection under the First Amendment than the associational rights of other private associations. Blasingame and Geth
  5. No. 98-7540: CARMELL, SCOTT L. v. TEXAS (TXCV2) Whether the Texas Court of Appeals erred in concluding that application of the 1993 version of Texas's article 38.07, Code of Criminal Procedure, was not ex post facto when: (I) the offense occurred in 1992, a full year before adoption of the new rules of law; (ii) there was no outcry for approximately three years, and the law in effect at the time required outcry within 6 months; and , (iii) the petitioner would have otherwise been entitled to an acquittal, in violation of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution.
  6. No. 99-5525: DICKERSON, CHARLES T. v. UNITED STATES (USAP7) Whether the passage of 18 U.S.C. 3501 was an unconstitutional attempt by Congress to legislatively overrule them Supreme Court's decision in Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966)?
  7. No. 99-224: DUCKWORTH, SUPT., PENDLETON v. FRENCH, RICHARD A., ET AL. (USAP7) Whether Section 3626(e) violates separation-of-powers principles by legislatively specifying a rule of decision or legislatively annulling a judgment.
  8. No. 98-2060: EDWARDS, WARDEN v. CARPENTER, ROBERT W. (USAP6) Whether a federal habeas court is barred from considering an ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim as "" cause"" for the procedural default of another habeas claim when the ineffective-assistance claim is itself procedurally defaulted.
  9. No. 99-936: FERGUSON, CRYSTAL v. CITY OF CHARLESTON, ET AL. (USCA4) Whether the ""special needs"" exception to the Fourth Amendment's warrant and probable cause requirements was properly applied to a discretionary drug testing program targeting hospital patients that was created and implemented with police and prosecutors primarily for law enforcement purposes?
  10. No. 98-1993: FLORIDA v. J. L. (FLSC) Whether an anonymous tip which states that a person is carrying a concealed firearm at a specific location, with a detailed description of the person and his attire, is sufficiently reliable to justify an investigatory detention and frisk where the police immediately verify the accuracy of the tip?
  11. No. 99-137: GARNER, J. WAYNE, ET AL. v. JONES, ROBERT L. (USCA11) Whether the ex post facto clause of the United States Constitution bars the State from applying its amended regulation governing the reconsideration schedule for life-sentenced inmates who have been denied parole, when the amendment has no effect on the sentence imposed, the substantive formula for the consideration of the prisoner for parole, or the determination of the prisoner's eligibility for parole, or whether the change creates only "the most speculative and attentuated possibility of producing the prohibited effect of increasing the measure of punishment." 2. Whether the decision below conflicts with the decisions of other United States Courts of Appeals and the appellate courts of the several states as to the meaning and import of this Court's decisions in California Dep't of Corrections V. Morales and Lynce v. Mathis.
  12. No. 98-1811: GEIER, ALEXIS, ET AL. v. AM. HONDA MOTOR CO., ET AL. (USCDC) Whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit erred by holding, in direct conflict with five state courts of last resort, that an automobile manufacturer's compliance with a federal motor vehicle safety standard that permits, but does not require, installation of airbags in passenger vehicles preempts state common law claims that an automobile was defectively designed because it lacked an airbag? 2. Whether the D.C. Circuit erred by holding that, because this Court engaged in implied preemption analysis in Freightliner Corp.V. Myrick, 514 U.S. 280 (1995), the lower courts are free to disregard the limitations on implied preemption most recently emphasized in Cipollone V. Liggett Group, Inc., 505 U.S. 504 (1992), to find that a Federal motor vehicle safety standard promulgated pursuant to the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 1966, 15 U.S.C. 1381-1431, impliedly preempts common law claims, even thought the Act expressly provides that "compliance with any Federal motor vehicle safety standard … does not exempt any person from any liability under common law''?
  13. No. 98-1856: HILL, LEILA J., ET AL. v. COLORADO, ET AL. (COSC) Does Colorado's statutory requirement that speakers obtain consent from passersby on public sidewalks and streets before speaking, displaying signs, or distributing leaflets unconstitutionally burden protected expressive rights in a traditional public forum? 2.Does Colorado's statutory designation of private citizens as censors of speech, picket signs, and leaflets on public streets and sidewalks impose an unconstitutional prior restraint? 3. Is a statute that gives broad discretion to passersby in public places to act as censors of speech, picket signs, and leaflets and which fails to prohibit content-based denials of the right to speak, to display signs, or to pass leaflets subject to strict scrutiny? 4. Is a statute that gives broad discretion to passersby in public places to act as censors of speech, picket signs, and leaflets and which fails to prohibit viewpoint-based denials of the right to speak, to display signs, or to pass leaflets unconstitutional per se? Reed and Bradley
  14. No. 99-1030: INDIANAPOLIS, IN, ET AL. v. EDMOND, JAMES, ET AL. (USAP7) Whether checkpoints at which law enforcement officers briefly stop vehicular traffic, check motorists' licenses and vehicle registrations, look for signs of impairment, and walk a "narcotics detection" dog around the exterior of each stopped automobile are unlawful under the Fourth Amendment. Gustus and McMonigle.
  15. No. 98-1706: INTL. ASSN. INDEP. TANKER v. LOCKE, GOVERNOR OF WA, ET AL (USCA9) Whether federal Statutes, regulations and international treaty commitments of the United States that prescribe comprehensive standards for tank vessel operations, personnel qualifications and manning expressly or impliedly preempt attempts by an agency of the State of Washington to enforce regulations that impose different standards and requirements governing the same subject matters aboard the same tank vessels. 2. Whether an individual state may deny entry to, or penalize for non-compliance with state safety and environmental protection regulations, a vessel that has been found by the vessel's nation of registry and the United States under multilateral treat commitments, federal law, and federal regulations governing safety and environmental protection.
  16. No. 99-5153: JOHNSON, CORNELL v. UNITED STATES (USAP9) Whether the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit erred in concluding that the district court properly imposed a ''tail "" of supervised release following incarceration after revoking Petitioner' s initial term of supervised release, in violation of the Ex Post Facto Clause of the United States Constitution." Claubalt and Sanchez
  17. No. 98-1648: MITCHELL, GUY, ET AL. v. HELMS, MARY L., ET AL. (USCA5) Whether a program under Chapter 2 of Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, 20 U.S.C. 7301, et seq., which provides federal funds to state and local education agencies to purchase and lend neutral, secular, and nonreligious materials such as computers, software, and library books to public and nonpublic schools for use by the students attending those schools, and which allocates the funds on an equal per-student basis, regardless of the religious or secular character of the schools the students choose to attend, violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
  18. No. 99-312: NORFOLK SOUTHERN RWY. CO. v. SHANKLIN, DEDRA, ETC. (USAP6) Whether the court of appeals properly applied this Court's decision in CSX Transportation, Inc. V. Easterwood, 507 U.S. 658 (1993), when it held, in acknowledged conflict with decisions of three other circuits, that claims of negligence based on in adeguate warning devices at a railway grade crossing are not preempted even through the warning devices at the crossing were installed with federal funds under a project approved by the federal government."
  19. No. 98-1991: PUBLIC LANDS COUNCIL, ET AL. v. BABBITT, SEC. OF INTERIOR (USADC) Is the protection and priority statutorily accorded to adjudicated rights to graze livestock on public lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management, by replacing established "grazing preferences" with variable "permitted uses" destroyed. Batista and Dutcher
  20. No. 98-1441: ROE, WARDEN v. ORTEGA, LUCIO FLORES (USAP9) Whether trial counsel has a Sixth Amendment duty to file a notice of appeal following a guilty plea in the absence a request by the defendant, particularly where the defendant has been advised of his appeal rights.
  21. No. 99-62: SANTA FE INDEP. SCH. DIST. v. DOE, JANE, ETC., ET AL. (USCA5) Whether petitioner's policy permitting student-led, student-initiated prayer at football games violates the Establishment Clause. Arévalo and Uota.
  22. No. 99-138: TROXEL, JENIFER, ET VIR v. GRANVILLE, TOMMIE (WASC) Does Revised Code of Washington 26.10.160(3) and the former RCW26.09.240 granting third parties, including grandparents, the right to petition for visitation rights with a minor child if the visitation is ""in the best interests of the child"" impermissibly interfere with a parent's fundamental interest in the ""care custody and companionship of a child"" as defined by the liberty and privacy provisions of the United States Constitution? 2. Did the Supreme Court of Washington err in Custody of Smith, 137 Wn.2d 1, 969 P.2d 21 (1998), in holding that RCW 26.10. 160(3) and the former RCW 26.09.240 are unconstitutional based upon the liberty interest of the Fourteenth Amendment and the fundamental right to privacy inherent in the United States Constitution when it used the flawed premise that a parent's fundamental right to autonomy in child-rearing decisions is unassailable and that the state's parents patriae power to act in a child's welfare may not be invoked absent a finding of harm to the child or parental unfitness?
  23. No. 98-1701: UNITED STATES v. LOCKE, GOV. OF WA, ET AL. (USCA9) Whether regulations adopted by the State of Washington governing staffing and operation of oceangoing oil tankers engaged in coastal and international commerce are preempted to the extent that they conflict with international obligations of the United States and Coast Guard regulations for such tankers promulgated pursuant to federal statutes and international conventions and agreements.
  24. No. 99-5: UNITED STATES v. MORRISON, ANTONIO J., ET AL. (USA4) Whether 42 U.S.C. 13981, the provision of the Violence Against Women Act of 1994 that creates a private right of action for victims of gender-motivated violence, is a valid exercise of Congress's power under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. 2. Whether 42 U.S.C. 13981 is a valid exercise of Congress's power under the Enforcement Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Peacock and Smith.
  25. No. 98-796: UNITED STATES v. FL BD. OF REGENTS, ET AL. (USCA11) Whether the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1067, 29 U.S.C. 621 et seq., contains a clear abrogation of the States' Eleventh Amendment immunity from suit by individuals. 2. Whether the extension of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, 29 U.S.C. 621 et seq., to the States was a proper exercise of Congress's power under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment, thereby constituting a valid exercise of congressional power to abrogate the States' Eleventh Amendment immunity from suit by individuals.
  26. No. 99-166: UNITED STATES v. HUBBELL, WEBSTER L. (USCDC) Whether the Fifth Amendment's privilege against self-incrimination protects information previously recorded in voluntarily created documents that a defendant delivers to the government pursuant to an immunized act of production. 2. Whether a defendant's act producing ordinary business records constitutes a compelled testimonial communication solely because the government cannot identify the documents with reasonable particularity before they are produced."
  27. No. 98-1682: UNITED STATES, ET AL. v. PLAYBOY ENTERTAINMENT GROUP (USDE) Whether Section 505 violates the First Amendment. Whether the three-judge district court was divested of jurisdiction to dispose of the government's post- judgment motions under Rule 59 (e) and 60 (a) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure by the government's filing of a notice of appeal while those motions were pending. James Brady and
  28. No. 98-1828: VT AGENCY OF NAT. RESOURCES v. U. S., EX REL STEVENS (USAP2) 1. Whether a State is a "person" subject to liability under 31 U.S.C. 3729(a) of the False Claims Act? 2. Whether the Eleventh Amendment precludes a private realtor from commencing and prosecuting a False Claims Act suit against an unconsenting State?

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