The US Supreme Court on Monday struck down 18 USC § 924(c)(3)(B), a major federal statute with mandatory sentences for crimes committed with firearms, as unconstitutionally vague. The opinion, authored by Justice Neil Gorsuch, finds that the language of the statute is unconstitutionally vague and thus unfair to the defendant. The statute authorizes higher prison sentences [...]

The US Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) withdrew its plans to construct a US Penitentiary and Federal Prison Camp in Letcher County, Kentucky, on Thursday. A group of federal prisoners and advocacy groups, including the Abolitionist Law Center and Green Justice, challenged the construction of the new prison in a federal lawsuit. The complaint outlined [...]

The US Supreme Court unanimously held on Friday that North Carolina cannot tax a trust based only on a trust beneficiary’s residence in the state. The question at issue in NC Dept. of Revenue v. Kimberley Rice Kaestner 1992 Family Trust, was whether a trust beneficiary resident in the state of North Carolina established sufficient [...]

The US Supreme Court held in a 7-2 decision on Friday that undocumented immigrants must know both that they are in the country illegally and that they belong to a class that is proscribed from possessing firearms to be prosecuted under federal law. The petitioner, Hamid Mohamed Ahmed Ali Rehaif, whose F-1 student visa had [...]

The US Supreme Court ruled on Friday that property owners who have had their property taken by state or local governments may file a Fifth Amendment takings claim in federal court without having to first exhaust remedies in state court. The Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause requires that the government provide “just compensation” when taking private [...]

The US Supreme Court ruled on Friday that a Mississippi prosecutor unconstitutionally excluded black jurors from the murder trial of Curtis Flowers. The conviction will be set aside and Curtis Flowers retried. Flowers has been tried six times for the murder of four people in 1996; two of the trials ended in mistrials and, in [...]

The EPA announced on Wednesday that it had finalized a new rule to replace stringent emissions limits imposed under the Obama administration on coal-burning power plants. The new regulation, dubbed the Affordable Clean Energy rule (ACE) by EPA chairman Andrew Wheeler, aims to relax pollution standards from the stringent limits established under the Clean Power [...]

The UK Court of Appeal ruled in favor of the Campaign Against Arms Trade on Thursday, finding that a 2016 shift in policy resulted in illegal sales of arms to Saudi Arabia. The UK’s arms export policy, which was set out in the 2014  Consolidated EU and National Arms Export Licensing Criteria, requires licensing restrictions [...]

Mustafa Mousab Alowemer, a Pittsburgh resident and a recent graduate of a Pittsburgh public high school, was arrested on Wednesday based on a federal complaint charging him with one count of attempting to provide material support and resources to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), and two counts of distributing information relating to [...]

The Supreme Court held in a 6-3 decision on Thursday that the statute of limitations for a 42 U. S. C. §1983 fabricated-evidence claim does not begin until the criminal proceedings against a defendant have finished. The plaintiff in McDonough v. Smith was a commissioner of the county board of elections who processed ballots in [...]