Covert FBI Power to Obtain Phone Data Faces Rare Test

The Wall Street Journal:

Early last year, the Federal Bureau of Investigation sent a secret letter to a phone company demanding that it turn over customer records for an investigation. The phone company then did something almost unheard of: It fought the letter in court.

The U.S. Department of Justice fired back with a serious accusation. It filed a civil complaint claiming that the company, by not handing over its files, was interfering "with the United States' sovereign interests" in national security.

The legal clash represents a rare and significant test of an investigative tool strengthened by the USA Patriot Act, the counterterrorism law enacted after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The case is shrouded in secrecy. The person at the company who received the government's request—known as a "national security letter," or NSL—is legally barred from acknowledging the case, or even the letter's existence, to almost anyone but company lawyers.

"This is the most important national-security-letter case" in years, said Stephen Vladeck, a professor and expert on terrorism law at the American University Washington College of Law. "It raises a question Congress has been trying to answer: How do you protect the First Amendment rights of an NSL recipient at the same time as you protect the government's interest in secrecy?"

The confidentiality requirements make it impossible to definitively identify the company fighting the case. Its name and other identifying details have been redacted in court documents obtained by The Wall Street Journal.

The phone company's lawyer declined to name his client or respond to questions about its identity.

There are thousands of telecom companies in the U.S. However, the court papers offer clues that can be used to narrow down the list. The Journal cross-referenced the court papers against corporate websites and Federal Communications Commission records of telecom firms, and identified five firms that appeared to be possible matches with the company described in the case.

Four of the five companies denied any involvement in the case and declined to be interviewed about national security letters. At the fifth company, a top executive declined to confirm or deny, either on or off the record, whether his firm had received an NSL or is involved in the case.

That company, Working Assets Inc., runs a San Francisco-based telecom subsidiary called Credo, and uses some of its revenue to support liberal causes. The chief executive of Credo, Michael Kieschnick, offered his firm's view, in general terms, of these types of government requests. "There is a tension between privacy and the legitimate security needs of the country," he said. "We think it is best to resolve this through grand jury or judicial oversight."

Unlike search warrants, NSLs don't require a judge's oversight.

National security letters, which date back to the 1980s, have become more common since the passage of the Patriot Act, which expanded the government's ability to use them to collect information about people. As long as the head of an FBI field office certifies that the records would be relevant to a counterterrorism investigation, the bureau can send an NSL request without the backing of a judge or grand jury.

Full article can be found here.

NPR Supreme Court Recap

Oh what a term it was! NPR prepared a recap of the term including the incredible last ten days, and Justice Roberts trip to Malta. Full story here:

NPR reports that the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court have fled Washington, leaving in their wake a storm of historic headlines. In the last 10 days alone, the high court upheld the Obama health care law, struck down much of the Arizona immigration law and ruled unconstitutional mandatory sentences of life without parole for juveniles convicted of murder. Chief Justice John Roberts is in Malta, a place that, as he pointed out, is "an impregnable island fortress." He puckishly observed that it "seemed like a good idea" to go there after the tumultuous end of the Supreme Court term.

Supreme Court to Consider Whether Dog Sniff at a Home Requires Probable Cause

The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to clarify when police may use a drug-sniffing dog at the front door of a house, when police believe the house is being used in drug trafficking.  In the drug detection case, Florida v. Jardines (docket 11-564), the Court agreed to decide one of the two questions raised.  The constitutional issue at stake is whether police must have probable cause — a belief that evidence of a crime will be found — before they may use a dog sniff at the front door of a suspected “grow house,” or a site where marijuana is being grown.  The case grows out of a Miami police officer’s use of a drug-detecting dog, “Franky,” in December 2006 to follow up on a “crime stoppers” tip that the house was being used to grow marijuana plants.  The Florida Supreme Court ruled that police needed to have probable cause belief in wrongdoing before they could use the dog at the home, on the premise that the drug sniff was a “search” under the Fourth Amendment.
The state of Florida told the Supreme Court that the state ruling conflicts with Supreme Court precedent that a dog sniff is not a search under the Fourth Amendment.  “This Court,” the state said, “has explained that a dog sniff is not a search because the sole knowledge that the dog obtains by sniffing is the presence of contraband, which a person does not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in possessing in the first place.”   The petition cited the Court’s 2005 decision in Illinois v. Caballes, and argued that the Florida courts “are now alone in refusing to follow” that ruling.

Supreme Court Strikes Down Life Without Parole for Juveniles

On June 25, the U.S. Supreme Court announced that a scheme requiring mandatory sentences of life without parole for juveniles violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, regardless of the nature of the offense. The decision came down in two consolidated murder cases in which the defendants were 14 years old at the time of the offenses, Miller v. Alabama, 10-9646, and Jackson v. Hobbs, 10-9647. It is a 5-4 decision authored by Justice Kagan, and joined by Justices Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor. To read full decision, click here.

Fourth Amendment is Back: Justices Hold 9/0 that GPS Tracking Violates Fourth Amendment

The U.S. Supreme Court issued an opinion this morning in United States v. Jones upholding the suppression of evidence obtained by police using GPS tracking technology. The Supreme Court, in a 9/0 decision, held that the placing and monitoring of an individual's movements through GPS tracking is a search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.

The case stems from the conviction of Antoine Jones, a Washington D.C. nightclub owner who was suspected of drug dealing. Police had obtained a warrant to place a GPS device on Jones's car but they did not remove it when the warrant expired. They reinstalled the device and subsequently tracked Jones's movements for 28 days whereever his car went. Police used the GPS device to track Jones to a stash house, where they found cocaine, weapons and drug paraphernalia. He was convicted of conspiracy to distribute cocaine and sentenced to life in prison. The Supreme Court held that such an electronic search was a search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. The Court did not consider whether the search was "reasonable" under the Fourth Amendment because the Government did not raise that below. Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the Court, stated:

We hold that the government's installation of a GPS device on a target's vehicle, and its use of that device to monitor the vehicle's movements, constitutes a 'search'"

"The government physically occupied private property for the purpose of obtaining information," Scalia said. "By attaching the device to the Jeep, officers encroached on a protected area."

Keep Your Eyes Out for Eyewitness ID Ruling: Argument This Week

The Supreme Court will hear the case of Perry v. New Hampshire on November 2, 2011. The issue presented is whether an eyewitness identification should be excluded when the circumstances make the identification unreliable even where the police did not create the circumstances. The Supreme Court last considered eyewitness identification in 1977 in Manson v. Brathwaite where the Court held that eyewitness identification should not be excluded if the circumstances are reliable.

Mistaken identifications lead to wrongful convictions. Of the first 250 DNA exonerations, 190 involved eyewitnesses who were wrong, as documented in “Convicting the Innocent,” a recent book by Brandon L. Garrett, a law professor at the University of Virginia. A number of groups have written amicus briefs for the Court to consider in Perry including the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the Innocence Project, and the American Psychological Association. All briefing is available on Scotus. Stay tuned.

Changes Coming to Police Line-Up Procedures?

A new report released by the American Judicature Society has found that double-blind sequential lineups, which are lineups where the administrating officer does not know which person is the suspect and the witness only views one suspect at a time, produce fewer mistaken identifications that lineup procedures that present all of the suspect photographs at once or simultaneously. The report, “A Test of Simultaneous vs. Sequential Lineup Methods: An Initial Report of the AJS National Eyewitness Identification Field Studies,” has implications for reducing wrongful convictions in the United States criminal justice system. Eyewitness misidentification is the single greatest cause of wrongful convictions nationwide, playing a role in more than 75% of the 273 convictions overturned through DNA testing. The report is released on the heels of a decision from the New Jersey Supreme Court cited this “troubling lack of reliability” in setting new rules for addressing those weaknesses in New Jersey courtrooms. The United States Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments, in November, in its first significant eyewitness identification case in 34 years. The case, Perry v. New Hampshire, is concerned with whether judges must take a hard look at all identifications arising from suggestive circumstances or only those involving official misconduct. Read more from New York Times or Innocence Project.

Supreme Court Preview 924(c) Except Clause

An important case was heard on October 6, 2010 by the Supreme Court that will have ramifications for many that practice in the federal criminal context. In Abbott v. United States and Gould v. United States, the Court heard argument on whether two defendants were improperly sentenced to consecutive five-year prison terms under 18 U.S.C. § 924(c) when they were subject to a greater minimum sentence on a different count of conviction. The "except clause" mandates a five-year consecutive sentence for 924 Section (c)(1)(A), but exempts defendants “to the extent that a greater minimum sentence is otherwise provided by this subsection or any other law." Some courts have interpreted the clause to mean that if a longer mandatory minimum applies (e.g. 10 years for a narcotics offense) the 5 year count can run concurrently. Gonzaga's own Brooks Holland wrote this excellent piece for the ABA-previewing the argument, and laying out the four ways the Court could decide the issue. Here is an excerpt from the full article that provides clarity on at least the options if not yet the answers. Stay tuned: (full article here):

The Supreme Court will need to decide between two competing understandings of § 924(c)(1)(A). Petitioners present this provision as a true minimum sentence, ensuring that defendants subject to it serve at least five years in prison. If another statute does this job, § 924(c)(1)(A) is obviated and no longer applies. The government, by contrast, treats the provision as a sentencing bonus, ensuring that defendants subject to it receive at least five additional years in prison, cumulative to any other sentence. The “except” clause applies only if another statute more severely punishes that § 924(c) offense.
The parties’ briefs thus present the Supreme Court with four potential constructions of § 924(c)(1)(A)’s except clause. The Court could construe the “except” clause narrowly, as the government advocates, exempting defendants from a mandatory consecutive sentence only if a minimum sentence outside of § 924(c) more severely punishes that § 924(c) offense. According to the parties’ briefs, this construction likely would bring only one current law outside of § 924(c) into its except clause: 18 U.S.C. § 3559(c), which provides a life sentence for certain repeat offenders who violate § 924(c). This construction consequently would impact very few cases, and would exclude both Abbott and Gould. Although an aggressively narrow construction of § 924(c)(1)(A), the government’s position has been embraced by several circuit courts.
At the other end of the spectrum, the Supreme Court could adopt Gould’s broad reading of § 924(c)(1)(A) and hold that any greater minimum sentence applicable to a defendant at sentencing triggers the except clause. This position has not been adopted explicitly in the circuit courts, but it is supported in amicus briefs filed by the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and Families Against Mandatory Minimums.
In between these constructions, the Supreme Court could limit the “except” clause, as Abbott argues, to any greater minimum sentence arising from the same criminal transaction as the § 924(c) offense, including any predicate drug trafficking or violent crime, such as a CSA conviction. A majority of circuit courts have rejected this approach. The second circuit, however, recently embraced this construction, see United States v. Williams, 558 F.3d 166 (2nd Cir. 2009), as did the Sixth Circuit. See United States v. Almany, 598 F.3d 238 (6th Cir. 2009). This position also is supported by the American Bar Association’s amicus brief, which argues against the government practice of “stacking” mandatory minimum sentences against defendants. Alternatively, the Supreme Court could read the “except” clause to include greater minimum sentences for any firearm offense involving the same firearm as the § 924(c) offense. Abbott offers this construction as a backstop to prevent what he terms “double counting” of firearms between § 924(c) offenses and other firearm offenses with greater minimum sentences. This question has split the circuit courts fairly evenly. This narrower construction of § 924(c) would favor only Abbott, however, whose § 924(c) sentence ran consecutively to an ACCA sentence for firearm possession. Gould’s § 924(c) sentence ran consecutively to a predicate drug trafficking crime under the CSA. Gould thus does not advocate Abbott’s alternative construction.

Getting to FIve: New Book about Justice Brennan

The New York Times ran a book review of a book just released about Justice William Brennan, titled "Justice Brennan: Liberal Champion". The book, authored by Seth Stern and Stephen Wermiel, details the life behind the scenes of "getting to five", an expression the Justice used to explain the process of getting enough votes for some critical decisions. The authors were permitted hours of chambers interviews with Justice Brennan, who passed away in 1997, and granted exclusive access to tens of thousands of pages of materials in preparation for the book. An except from the review (full article here):

The burning question has always been whether Brennan’s influence on the Warren court — which engendered a revolution that has yet to be fully reversed all these years later — was as dramatic and outsized as we’ve been led to believe. In “The Brethren,” Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong described Brennan glad-handing and horse-trading his way to one victory after another, a depiction Brennan resented for portraying him as the archetypal “Irish ward boss.”

In the decades since, Brennan has come to be seen as an epic strategist and deal-maker who coordinated many of the Warren court’s major decisions behind the scenes. Where this book truly soars is in its account of Brennan’s skills at — as he always described it to his clerks — getting to five: finding a way to string together five fractious votes for some new principle or doctrine, or seeding some future principle or doctrine between the lines. It’s clear from this biography that what Brennan did wasn’t alchemy, even when it wasn’t always perfectly principled. He emerges as so carefully attuned to the concerns and passions of his colleagues that he was able, time after time, to draft opinions, or help them draft opinions, in ways that could achieve five votes.

First Monday

The Fourth of October, 2010, marks the new term of the United States Supreme Court. For following the Supreme Court term, SCOTUSblog is always a good choice. The Court opens its term with a new Justice, and a host of cases on its menu including free speech, immigration, criminal cases and even a case on violent video games. For the first time, the high court will have three women on the bench — justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, and the newly confirmed Elena Kagan, who replaces the retired leader of the court's liberal bloc, John Paul Stevens.

Important Case on Prosecutor Immunity for Procuring False Testimony

Last month, the Supreme Court heard argument in an interesting and important case that will define the limits of prosecutoral immunity. In Pottawattamie County v. McGhee, the Court heard argument in November regarding this issue: Whether a prosecutor may be subjected to a civil trial and potential damages for a wrongful conviction and incarceration where the prosecutor allegedly violated a criminal defendant’s “substantive due process” rights by procuring false testimony during the criminal investigation, and then introduced that same testimony against the criminal defendant at trial. Gerry Spence was among counsel who represent the Respondents who were wrongfully charged and convicted of killing a police officer. The men spent more than twenty years in prison. The men were convicted based upon the testimony of an informant who was promised leniency for his testimony. Police and prosecutors were apparently aware of the fabricated testimony yet nevertheless hid exculpatory evidence. Once the evidence was discovered twenty years later in a post conviction habeas proceeding, the prosecutor assigned to the case lied to one of the wrongfully convicted men in order to continue the charade of the retrial.

The case presents interesting issues on the pitfalls of using informants and whether there should be some responsibility put on the police and prosecutors who use them.

Supreme Court to Take Texting Case, LOL

The Supreme Court accepted review on CITY OF ONTARIO V. QUON. The issue involves whether the City of Ontario police department violated the constitutional privacy rights of an employee when it inspected personal text messages sent and received on a government pager. A little background is useful...

The City of Ontario had issued two-way pagers to its SWAT team. The officers were told they were responsible for charges in excess of 25,000 characters a month. The City had a formal policy reserving the right to monitor “network activity including e-mail and Internet use,” allowing “light personal communications” by employees but cautioning that they “should have no expectation of privacy.” It did not directly address text messages.

Under an informal policy adopted by a police lieutenant, those who paid the excess charges themselves would not have their messages inspected. The lieutenant eventually changed his mind and ordered transcripts of messages sent and received by Sgt. Quon. In one month in 2002, only 57 of more than 450 of those messages were related to official business. Many of the messages were sexually explicit in nature.

Sergeant Quon and some of the people with whom he messaged sued, saying their Fourth Amendment rights had been violated. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said the department’s formal policy had been overridden by the “operational reality” of the lieutenant’s informal policy. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that the Fourth Amendment protects the contents of the text messages even if the address (in this case the telephone number) is not protected. See Ninth Circuit Blog for analysis of the Ninth Circuit opinion.

Now, the Supreme Court will decide whether the officers had a reasonable expectation of privacy with the work-issued pager; whether the police department could have found a less intrusive way to review the messages; and whether the individuals who sent the messages to a police-issued pager have a reasonable expectation of privacy that the message would be free from review by the employer. The case has large ramifications for anyone interested in the Fourth Amendment and privacy issues. Many businesses, incjavascript:void(0)luding government employers, issue cell phones, pagers, and computers to their employees so the holding could affect many people. For more coverage of this issue, see the New York Times article and the Scotus Blog.

Sixth Amendment Requires Cross-Examination of Forensic Lab Witness

The United States Supreme Court announced a decision today in MELENDEZ-DIAZ v. MASSACHUSETTS on the Sixth Amendment Right to cross-examine witnesses. The case involves a drug case brought by the State of Massachusetts in which the State introduced a lab certificate stating that the material seized by the police was in fact cocaine as well as the quality and quantity seized. Melendez-Diaz argued that the introduction of the lab certificate violated the Sixth Amendment and Crawford v. Washington because Melendez-Diaz has a right to cross-examine the lab witness as to process and findings.

The Supreme Court ruled that in fact the lab certificate, even though notarized, was testimonial as it was prepared in anticipation of litigation and that Melendez-Diaz has a right to cross-examine the lab witness. The Court further stated:

Petitioner's power to subpoena the analysts is no substitute for the right of confrontation. Finally, the requirements of the Confrontation Clause may not be relaxed because they make the prosecution's task burdensome. In any event, the practice in many States already accords with today's decision, and the serious disruption predicted by respondent and the dissent has not materialized.

The opinion also quotes from the recent National Academy of Sciences report regarding the not always reliable scientific testing that results from forensic labs:

Nor is it evident that what respondent calls "neutral scientific testing" is as neutral or as reliable as respondent suggests. Forensic evidence is not uniquely immune from the risk of manipulation. According to a recent study conducted under the auspices of the National Academy of Sciences, "[t]he majority of [laboratories producing forensic evidence] are administered by law enforcement agencies, such as police departments, where the laboratory administrator reports to the head of the agency." National Research Council of the National Academies, Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward 6-1 (Prepublication Copy Feb. 2009) (hereinafter National Academy Report). And "[b]ecause forensic scientists often are driven in their work by a need to answer a particular question related to the issues of a particular case, they sometimes face pressure to sacrifice appropriate methodology for the sake of expediency." Id., at S-17. A forensic analyst responding to a request from a law enforcement official may feel pressure--or have an incentive--to alter the evidence in a manner favorable to the prosecution.

Remember to look critically at any evidence (business records, certificates, or any written document) that the Government wants to introduce in lieu of live testimony especially if prepared after the incident. Also, challenges to forensic evidence is more viable than ever given the mention in the Supreme Court opinion and based upon the wealth of information available from the National Academy of Sciences report.
Congratulations to Jeffrey Fisher of the Stanford Law Clinic for this important decision reaffirming the importance of cross-examination!

Report on Sentencing Levels for Crack and Powder Cocaine in Light of Supreme Court Rulings

Recently released and made available on the Sentencing Law and Policy Blog is a report by the Congressional Research Service, titled "Sentencing Levels for Crack and Powder Cocaine in Light of Kimbrough and the Impact of Booker." This document, which can be downloaded here, provides a very effective review of past and present federal sentencing realities, all the way through the new guidelines and most recent Supreme Court and circuit jurisprudence.

Justices Step Closer to Repeal of Evidence Ruling

From the New York Times:

In 1983, a young lawyer in the Reagan White House was hard at work on what he called in a memorandum “the campaign to amend or abolish the exclusionary rule” — the principle that evidence obtained by police misconduct cannot be used against a defendant.

The Reagan administration’s attacks on the exclusionary rule — a barrage of speeches, opinion articles, litigation and proposed legislation — never gained much traction. But now that young lawyer, John G. Roberts Jr., is chief justice of the United States.

This month, Chief Justice Roberts, writing for the majority in Herring v. United States, a 5-to-4 decision, took a big step toward the goal he had discussed a quarter-century before. Taking aim at one of the towering legacies of the Warren Court, its landmark 1961 decision applying the exclusionary rule to the states, the chief justice’s majority opinion established for the first time that unlawful police conduct should not require the suppression of evidence if all that was involved was isolated carelessness. That was a significant step in itself. More important yet, it suggested that the exclusionary rule itself might be at risk.

The Herring decision “jumped a firewall,” said Kent Scheidegger, the general counsel of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, a victims’ rights group. “I think Herring may be setting the stage for the Holy Grail,” he wrote on the group’s blog, referring to the overruling of Mapp v. Ohio, the 1961 Warren Court decision.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. joined the Herring decision and has been a reliable vote for narrowing the protections afforded criminal defendants since he joined the court in 2006. In applying for a job in the Reagan Justice Department in 1985, he wrote that his interest in the law had been “motivated in large part by disagreement with Warren Court decisions, particularly in the areas of criminal procedure,” religious freedom and voting rights.

Full story here.

Kid Strip-Search Constitutional?

From ACLU Blog

You may have heard the infamous case of the 13-year-old girl who was strip-searched by school officials for allegedly possession ibuprofen (Advil). Perhaps as surprising as the strip search itself is today’s news that the U.S. Supreme Court has granted review in the case — meaning it will reconsider a lower court’s ruling that the student’s constitutional rights were violated.

The Issue Presented to the Supreme Court is: Whether the Fourth Amendment prohibits public school officials from conducting a strip search of a student suspected of possessing and distributing a prescription drug on campus in violation of school policy. ScotusBlog has the order and Petitions for Certiorari.

Supreme Court Eases Limits on Evidence

From the New York Times:

The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that evidence obtained from an unlawful arrest based on careless record keeping by the police may be used against a criminal defendant.
The 5-to-4 decision revealed competing conceptions of the exclusionary rule, which requires the suppression of some evidence obtained through police misconduct, and suggested that the court’s commitment to the rule was fragile.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the majority, said that the exclusion of evidence should be a last resort and that judges should use a sliding scale in deciding whether particular misconduct by the police warranted suppressing the evidence they had found.

“To trigger the exclusionary rule,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote, “police conduct must be sufficiently deliberate that exclusion can meaningfully deter it, and sufficiently culpable that such deterrence is worth the price paid by the justice system.”

That price, the chief justice wrote, “is, of course, letting guilty and possibly dangerous defendants go free.”

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing for the dissenters, argued for “a more majestic conception” of the exclusionary rule, and a more categorical one.

Full article here.

"Hey, I don't have a problem with Black people, some of my closest friends are Black."

From the Washington Post:

Justices Will Hear Challenge to Voting Rights Act

The Supreme Court agreed yesterday to examine whether a central component of landmark civil rights legislation enacted to protect minority voters is still needed in a nation that has elected an African American president.

The court will decide the constitutionality of a provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that seeks to protect minority voting rights by requiring a broad set of states and jurisdictions where discrimination was once routine to receive federal approval before altering any of their voting procedures.

The Supreme Court has upheld the requirement in the past, saying the intrusion on state sovereignty is warranted to protect voting rights and eliminate discrimination against minorities. But challengers say it ignores the reality of modern America and "consigns broad swaths of the nation to apparently perpetual federal receivership based on 40-year-old evidence."

Full story here.

Did We Say Confront "Witnesses"?

Today, the United States Supreme Court heard argument in Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts (07-591). A central issue in the case is whether a crime lab report is, in itself, a form of testimony. Appearing for Melendez-Diaz is Jeffrey Fischer of Crawford v. Washington fame. Melendez-Diaz was convicted in Massachusetts of drug trafficking: evidence admitted during his trial included a crime lab report that concluded that the substance discovered was cocaine. No live chemist testified, and the trial judge told the jury that it could rely on the chemist’s reports as proof that the substance seized contained cocaine. Forty-four states and the District of Columbia allow drug lab reports to be admitted in lieu of live testimony.

Melendez-Diaz is arguing that crime lab reports should not be admitted without a witness as reports are prepared by law enforcement for criminal trials and can be fraught with error-the reports, and the witnesses that prepare them, should be subject to the rigors of cross-examination.

Click here for a summary of argument and ScotusWiki for briefing. Click here for more information on Forensic Lab problems. The right to confront witnesses means more than the right to confront pieces of paper.

Get to Know Your Supreme Court

This video from the ACLU is video one from a series of four. This is the first video in the series and introduces us to our Supreme Court. It is worth a watch to get a sense on what the make-up of the Court is when we are trying to predict what they will do this term.