Tony Mauro

December 13, 2004 | Law.com

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday announced it will hear new cases that will insert it into cutting-edge debates over copyright and international law. The copyright case MGM Studios v. Grokster and StreamCast Networks will test whether the peer-to-peer file transfer of music and movies has become so decentralized that the makers of Grokster and Morpheus file-sharing software are free of liability for copyright infringement.

By Tony Mauro

4 minute read

January 19, 2011 | National Law Journal

Maybe corporations aren?t like people, after all. Supreme Court justices seemed to agree on that point on Wednesday, almost exactly a year after the Court launched an angry debate over corporate personhood in the Citizens United campaign finance case.

By Tony Mauro

5 minute read

December 08, 2005 | Law.com

Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. on Wednesday announced his first signed opinion since joining the Supreme Court, and it fit the Court's traditional formula for maiden efforts: brief, unanimous, and not destined for the top 10 list of the Court's decisions of the term. But as routine as the attorney fee case might have been, the opinion was studded with interesting nuggets -- and included an unnecessary but forgivable shout-out to the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist.

By Tony Mauro

4 minute read

September 16, 2005 | The Recorder

Reflections from the late chief justice's former law clerks, colleagues, and the man who cut his hair.

By Vanessa Blum and Tony Mauro

10 minute read

April 02, 2009 | National Law Journal

The Supreme Court's growing embrace of arbitration continued Wednesday with a 5-4 ruling endorsing labor contracts that send age discrimination claims to arbitration rather than to federal courts. In another pro-business decision, the Court said the EPA may use cost-benefit analysis to set standards for power plants under the Clean Water Act. The rulings came a day after the Court dismissed a Philip Morris appeal of a $79 million verdict, leading some to wonder how pro-business the Roberts Court really is.

By Tony Mauro

4 minute read

December 08, 2009 | Law.com

The U.S. Supreme Court appeared inclined to leave well enough alone Monday and not tinker with the structure of an accounting oversight board created by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. Congress created the Public Accounting Oversight Board in the aftermath of the Enron and WorldCom accounting scandals, giving the board broad and independent power to regulate accounting firms, which had been self-regulated before. The suit challenges the board's constitutionality as too insulated from presidential power.

By Tony Mauro

3 minute read

April 13, 2010 | The Legal Intelligencer

Washington's spin machine cycled into high gear Monday, churning out a new set of names as possible contenders to fill Justice John Paul Stevens' seat on the U.S. Supreme Court.

By Tony Mauro and David Ingram

6 minute read

January 13, 2010 | Law.com

The fast-moving dispute over broadcast access to the federal trial on California's ban on same-sex marriage has triggered a dustup within the leadership of the federal judiciary. An exchange between 9th Circuit Chief Judge Alex Kozinski and top officials of the Judicial Conference of the United States adds a new dynamic to the dispute over Judge Vaughn Walker's plan to tape the trial for posting on his court's Web site and on YouTube. And the U.S. Supreme Court is set to weigh in on the plan today.

By Tony Mauro

5 minute read

January 20, 2010 | Law.com

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday strengthened the right to public criminal trials, ruling in a Georgia case that jury voir dire proceedings should be open to defendants and to the public. Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justice Antonin Scalia, dissented, asserting that the case should have been decided only after full briefing and oral argument. Thomas also wrote that the ruling "belittles the efforts of our judicial colleagues" who have to interpret conflicting precedents on the issue.

By Tony Mauro

4 minute read

February 03, 2005 | Law.com

They call themselves "the last-minute babes of Stanford Law." Last term, there was Jenny Martinez, arguing the landmark enemy combatant case Rumsfeld v. Padilla, with less than a week's notice. And in one of this term's biggest cases, former Stanford Dean Kathleen Sullivan argued in December for the interstate shipment of wines to consumers, beating out former Solicitor General Kenneth Starr for the case.

By Tony Mauro

7 minute read