The 5th floor of the Supreme Court building contains a basketball court, nicknamed “the highest court of the land”. The Supreme Court courtroom sits below it on the 4th floor, and the basketball court may not be used while the Court is in session.
Candid shot of clerks using the basketball court at the Supreme Court building. The space is not open to the general public.
In 1830 James Porter and George Wilson were convicted on several counts of stealing mail and jeopardizing the life of a mail carrier. They were convicted, and Porter was executed soon after. Wilson’s influential friends secured a pardon from President Andrew Jackson, but Wilson refused it. The Supreme Court took up the question of whether a presidential pardon could be rejected, ultimately ruling that it could in US. v. Wilson, 32 U.S. 150 (1833). Wilson therefore won his argument, and was accordingly hanged.
The Twenty-fifth Amendment was adopted in 1967 and establishes that the Vice President succeeds the President in the result of the President’s death, resignation or incapacity, and also establishes a process for filling a vacancy in the office of the Vice President. It was adopted in order to address the ambiguous language in Article II, Section 1, Clause 6 of the Constitution which did not make clear the role of the Vice President under such circumstances.
A 2016 study has shown that jurors who are shown surveillance video, in slow motion, of criminal acts committed by defendants often suffer from ‘intentionality bias’. Even when reminded that the footage was artificially slowed down, unanimous juries were four times more likely to convict when they viewed slowed-down video than juries who did not. The study shows that jurors ascribed greater premeditation and intent to these defendants, despite the reminders, resulting in higher conviction rates as well as more severe sentences.
Under ancient Anglo-Saxon law a plaintiff who suffered injuries or death was allowed to seek vengeance, either personally or through surviving family members, through a “blood feud“. This vendetta system was eventually replaced by payments referred to as “blood fines”, “bloodwit” or “blood money“. As tort law developed, these payments were divided into two general categories known to us today: compensatory damages and punitive damages.
Eight states still possess constitutional prohibitions against atheists from holding public office: Arkansas, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas. While these provisions still exist, they are unenforceable under the 1961 decision of Torcaso v. Watkins, in which an unanimous Supreme Court ruled that the requirement of a religious test for public state or federal office violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments. Interestingly, Tennessee’s constitution attempts to bar both atheists as well as ministers from public office, the latter as they “ought not to be diverted from the great duties of their functions.”
The pervasive use of billable hours by lawyers in the U.S. is a fairly recent phenomenon. Historically lawyers billed at flat rates, or on percentage bases, or based on ‘value billing’ for ‘services rendered’. The ABA began promoting hourly billing in 1958, arguing that as lawyers’ time was their “sole expendable asset”, they needed to better record and charge for it. However, state and local bar associations published minimum fee schedules for many years, until these were struck down on anti-trust grounds in Goldfarb v. Virginia State Bar (1975). Following that decision, large firms generally switched to billable hours, which became the norm by the late 1970s. Billable hour expectations have grown greatly during that time; in 1958 the ABA considered 1,300 billable hours per year to be a reasonable full-time figure, although today large firms generally consider 1,800 -2,300 or more to be billable hour minimums.
The proposed amendment currently closest to ratification is the “Equal Rights for Attorneys” Amendment” (ERA), which if ratified would become the 29th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The ERA would make lawyers a protected class, and treats as hate speech any “comments, jokes, riddles, witticisms, statements or accusations” that “tend to denigrate, disparage, belittle, deprecate, cast aspersions on, cause ridicule or scorn, or otherwise unjustly sully the reputation of those honorable members who have been called to the Bar.” It was proposed in 1798, has currently been ratified by 13 state legislatures, and has no deadline for ratification.
April Fool’s!
The first gun law passed in the United States was in Kentucky in 1813, which banned people from carrying concealed weapons. Kentucky currently requires a permit for concealed carry, although a gun permit is not required for owning a firearm. The first major federal gun control legislation was the National Firearms Act of 1934, which brought machine guns and other firearms under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
The Corwin Amendment was proposed in 1861 as an attempt to reverse the creation of the Confederate States of America and prevent further border states from seceding, and would have prohibited Congress from passing any laws that interfered with the “domestic institutions” of any state and which specifically referenced slavery. The amendment, which had no deadline attached to it, was eventually ratified by five states. The text reads:
No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.
A ‘wobbler’, otherwise known as a ‘hybrid crime’, is one that can be charged as either a felony or a misdemeanor. These crimes are said to ‘wobble’ between these two categories, as they can be charged as either based on a prosecutor’s discretion. The penalties are therefore dictated by whether the defendant is charged and convicted of a felony or misdemeanor. Examples include assault and DUIs (both of which may be charged as felonies if they result in serious harm or death) or grand theft (depending on the value of the property). California likely has the most wobbler offenses, as it has over a hundred on the books.
The Fugitive Slave Clause is found in Article 4, Clause 3 of the Constitution, which states that “No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.” While never repealed — an attempt to do so in 1864 failed — the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment invalidated this provision.