The VLW Blog

Since retirement from the U.S. Supreme Court, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor has been sitting in on appeals panels around the country.
As a substitute judge, Justice O’Connor has heard nearly 80 cases and written more than a dozen opinions for federal appellate courts, reports The Wall Street Journal.
Justice O’Connor’s latest opinion, Walker v. Prince George’s County, [...]

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Retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter has opted for a $500,000 suburban New Hampshire home instead of his aging family farmhouse.
According to The New York Times, Justice Souter has concerns that the farmhouse wasn’t structurally sound enough to hold his thousands of books, and that he wanted to live on one level.

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Gov. Timothy M. Kaine this morning called a special session of the legislature for Aug. 19 to address the problems created by Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts.
Mark Rubin, counsel to the governor, said, “A legislative fix doesn’t cure the problem, but it will help us manage the problem.”
The problem is that the 5-4 decision by the U.S. [...]

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Paul W. Powell will not be executed tomorrow night.
U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts granted a stay of execution today pending review of his petition for a writ of certiorari to the high court.
The three-sentence order indicates that Powell shouldn’t put but so much faith in the stay, however.
If the court denies the petition, “this stay [...]

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The remand of the Supreme Court of Virginia’s ruling in Magruder v. Commonwealth appeared to be the most likely result of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on Thursday on the application of the Confrontation Clause to lab reports.
The U.S. Supreme Court said, in essence, that an affidavit by a lab technician is no substitute for [...]

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Forensic scientists may be more frequent visitors to Virginia courtrooms as a result of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling yesterday that laboratory reports are testimonial evidence and therefore invoke the Confrontation Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
The court split 5-4, with Justice Scalia, the author of Crawford v.Washington, the 2004 opinion that rewrote the concept of what [...]

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Special education directors in Hampton and Newport News have little concern over a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling allowing reimbursement for private special ed placements.
According to the Daily Press, the high court recently ruled that parents of special education students can be reimbursed for private school tuition and costs, even if their children never received [...]

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An 8-to-1 majority of the U.S. Supreme Court today held it was an unconstitutional intrusion for school officials to search a 13-year-old girl’s bra and underpants for a suspected prescription drug.  “[T]he content of the suspicion failed to match the degree of intrusion,” wrote retiring Justice David Souter for the majority.
By a 7-to-2 vote, however, [...]

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The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals split 6-5 today in upholding the constitutionality of Virginia’s partial-birth abortion law.
The votes in the case will underscore the arguments of those who stress the importance of the President in shaping the country’s judiciary.
All six members of the majority were appointed by Republicans, and all the minority judges [...]

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The U.S. Supreme Court holds a cocaine user did not commit felony facilitation of a Virginia drug dealer’s business merely by using his cellphone to arrange small purchases for personal use.
The case, decided yesterday, arises out of an investigation of a drug dealer in the Northern Virginia suburbs.  The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals [...]

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