The U.S. Supreme Court today largely upheld the Affordable Care Act, President Obama’s signature health care law, as predicted by University of Notre Dame Associate Dean and Law Professor Richard W. Garnett, a past clerk to former Chief Justice William Rehnquist and an expert on constitutional-law and religious-freedom matters.

The court decided that the “individual mandate,” which requires Americans to either purchase health insurance or pay a fine, effectively functions as a tax and is therefore constitutionally permissible.

“While the individual mandate survived its constitutional challenges, the sweeping assertions of regulatory power made by many of the act’s supporters did not,” Garnett says. “As the chief justice wrote, ‘the framers created a federal government of limited powers and assigned to this court the duty of enforcing those limits. The court does so today.’ Read More

Following Supreme Court health-care ruling, House GOP will again try to repeal the law – The Washington Post – June 28, 2012

Roberts delivers for president who had opposed him – AP – June 28, 2012

Legal Scholars React: ‘Many People Were Stunned’ – NPR – June 28, 2012

Beyond the mandate: Court’s ruling on another ACA provision could have sweeping implications – MSNBC – June 28, 2012

Conservatives Misguided Criticism of Roberts (Opinion: by Richard Garnett) National Review – June 28, 2012 Read More

Professor Judith Fox delivered a presentation on “Predatory lending: A Civil Rights Threat” to the 39th Annual Indiana Consortium of State and Local Human Rights Agencies June 21. Read More

Legal Writing Professor Jane Simon made the list at number 29 of Top 50 Law Professors on Twitter by WorldWideLearn web site. The top law professors dominate the Twitter-verse, either through the wit, volume or audience. Criteria for selection for this list include the quality of the tweets, the number of followers and the most active users.

29. Jane Simon, @LawWriter, Notre Dame University. This legal writing prof and frequent Tweeter posts interesting tidbits on legal topics and much more. Extracurricular interests run to sports and new media. > Read More Read More

Heroes of religious liberty span centuries
Catholic San Francisco
Religious liberty heroes are many and not limited to the 1700s, according to scholars at the University of Notre Dame (Gerard Bradley, professor of law, and Richard W. Garnett, associate dean of Notre Dame Law School). Read More

Kelly Jentzen Thompson, J.D. ’12, of Arlington, Virginia, and Rachel Odio, J.D. ’12, of Costa Rica will be spending the next two years serving as the Law School’s 2012 Notre Dame Fellows in Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles, California.

Highly competitive, the Notre Dame Fellowship award requires applicants to develop and propose a two-year public interest program to be implemented with a host agency and a willing supervising attorney. Funded entirely by the law school’s benefactors, the Fellowship pays the Fellows’ salaries and employer-provided health and other benefits for two years. Read More

The 2012 Rev. Edward Frederick Sorin, C.S.C. Award was recently presented to Judge Ann Claire Williams. She is the first judge of color appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and the third woman of color to serve on any U.S. court of appeals. Before that appointment, Williams served on the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. At 35, she was the youngest woman of color ever appointed to the federal bench. Read More

Professor Doug Cassel has been elected by the Organization of American States (OAS) to serve on the Board of Directors of the Justice Studies Center of the Americas. Read More

The Peggy Browning Fund has awarded a 10-week summer fellowship to Michael Gillman, a rising 3L at NDLS. Gillman is spending the fellowship working at the Laborers’ International Union of North America in Washington, D.C. Read More

Along with the second-year trial teams that compete in the American Association of Justice trial competition each year, Notre Dame’s third-year trial teams, The Barristers Trial Teams, are making NDLS a force to be reckoned with on the national trial competition stage. Read More

Professor Jimmy Gurulé delivered two panel presentations at a major international conference held in Siracusa, Italy, May 20-24, 2012. Read More

Liberals’ threats to Supreme Court over ObamaCare are a bad (and dumb) idea
Fox News.com
By Richard W. Garnett Professor of Law and Associate Dean at the University of Notre Dame School of Law. Read More

Vice President and Associate Provost J. Nicholas Entrikin has appointed Professor Paolo Carozza to be the Director of the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame.

A specialist in comparative law, international law, and human rights, and with expertise in both Latin America and Europe, Carozza has wide experience with the complex interdisciplinary issues that Kellogg Institute scholars engage in their work. As a member and then President of the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights from 2006 to 2010, Carozza has also been extensively involved in the practical work of addressing the abuses of past political regimes and fostering the conditions for democratic governance throughout the hemisphere. At Notre Dame Law School, he is the founding director of the innovative, interdisciplinary Program on Law and Human Development and directs the Doctorate of Juridical Science (J.S.D.) program. Recently he was appointed Director of the Center for Civil and Human Rights (CCHR), which was founded by Fr. Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C. in 1973. Read More

Major television news outlets have interviewed Professor Richard W. Garnett and Professor Carter Snead about the University of Notre Dame’s lawsuit challenging an HHS mandate on religious liberty grounds.

Professor Snead appeared on CNN. Professor Garnett appeared on MSNBC, where he was interviewed by Thomas Roberts, on the Fox News Channel’s “On the Record with Greta Van Sustern,” and on the Geraldo Rivera Show on Talk Radio 790 KABC. Read More

Today, the University of Notre Dame, along with a diverse group of universities and schools, health care providers and social welfare agencies, filed federal lawsuits challenging the Obama administration’s rule that requires many religious employers to provide coverage to their employees for sterilization, contraception and some abortion-causing drugs.

The lawsuits are efforts to “vindicate the country’s constitutional and traditional commitments to religious freedom and pluralism,” according to University of Notre Dame Law Professor Richard W. Garnett, whose teaching and scholarly research focus on constitutional law and religious freedom matters. Read More

Adrienne M. de la Rosa has been awarded the Peter Lardy Memorial Fellowship for the 2012-13 academic year. Dedicated by the Class of 1975 to the memory of Peter A.R. Lardy and “those who exemplify his Courage, Love, and Understanding toward his fellow man,” the fellowship includes a $20,000 tuition remission for the recipient’s third year of law school. Read More

Professor O. Carter Snead has been named a Fellow of the Notre Dame Reilly Center for Science, Technology, and Values. Read More

Sunny Hostin, J.D. ’94, was named the Alvin McKenna Alumnus of the Year Award and asked to give the keynote address at the 2012 Black Law Students Association awards banquet at NDLS this year. Read More

John Nagle was interviewed on CBCRadio, The Current show on Green Evangelists on May 9th. Read More

NDLS student Brian Michel recently argued a Miranda violation case before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. Brian was selected for the honor after competing for an NDLS Moot Court Board position as part of the NDLS Moot Court program. The Moot Court program, which coordinates intramural and intercollegiate competitions in its appellate, trial, and international divisions, is run by NDLS students and overseen by Legal Writing Program Director Christine Venter.

“My client had been convicted of first-degree murder under the accountability theory, and sentenced to 28 years for his role in a Chicago shooting,” Michel said.

“His argument throughout trial was that the police refused to provide him with access to counsel. On appeal, we took the position that the Illinois Appellate Court had failed to look at the totality of the circumstances surrounding my client’s confession when it refused to believe his claims that he had repeatedly requested counsel during his seventeen-hour interrogation.

“Personally, I saw my involvement in this case as the highlight of my time at Notre Dame. It was rewarding to defend my client’s basic right to an attorney, a right which is so crucial to a fair criminal justice system.”

An audio file of Michel’s oral argument in Lawrence Coleman v. Marcus Hardy is available on the Seventh Circuit’s website. > Read More Read More

Prof. Jimmy Gurule was interviewed by ilsussidario.net in Italy on the Khalid Sheik Mohammed trial. The interview was published both English and Italian. Read More

Tea Party Activist Concerned About IRS Questions
WLWT.com
“What the IRS is trying to do is figure out how much of their activity is about supporting or opposing candidates,” said Lloyd Hitoski Mayer, associate dean at Notre Dame Law School. “Whether that’s an appropriate question depends on whether the IRS had information that he’s connected to the group that’s applying.” Read More

Accused 9/11 plotters to appear in Guantanamo Bay court
Los Angeles Times
“The administration claims that its military commission rules have now been improved to ensure a fair and credible trial,” Douglass Cassel, a University of Notre Dame law professor and humanitarian law expert, said this week.

Will a military trial of the 9/11 suspects be credible?
CNN.com
Douglass Cassel is a Notre Dame presidential fellow and professor of law at the University of Notre Dame. He has filed briefs in the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of the rights of prisoners at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and accountability for human rights violations under the Alien Tort Claims Act. Read More

Leading IP scholars from across the country gathered at NDLS on April 27 for a roundtable on Professor Robert P. Merges’s 2011 book Justifying Intellectual Property.

The all-day conference was organized by NDLS Professor Mark P. McKenna. In addition to Professor McKenna, speakers included professors Barton Beebe (NYU), Oren Bracha (Texas), Eric Claeys (George Mason), Abraham Drassinower (Toronto), Shubha Ghosh (Wisconsin), Daniel B. Kelly, Brian Lee (Brooklyn); Margaret Radin (Michigan); Carol Rose (Arizona/Yale); Dave Schwartz (Chicago-Kent), Avishalom Tor, and Zahr Said (Washington). Read More

Professor M. Cathleen Kaveny participated in a panel discussion with Boston College Law School Dean Vincent Rougeau at Boston College’s Church in the 21st Century Center. Joining Professor Kaveny and Dean Rougeau was the Rev. J. Bryan Hehir. Read More

Teacher says Catholic school fired her over IVF
Associated Press
“The Supreme Court didn’t give us a kind of neat little on-off test as to who’s a minister and who isn’t,” said Rick Garnett, associate dean and professor of law at Notre Dame Law School. Read More

Justice Marta Cartabia, a member of the Constitutional Court of Italy and a former Constitutional Law Professor at Milano Bicocca University, will deliver a lecture on “Toward a New European Model of Constitutional Adjudication?” at 4:30 p.m. April 26 in Eck Hall of Law Room 1140.

Justice Cartabia is the only woman among the members of the Consulta, the third woman to become a member in the history of the Court, and one of the youngest judges ever appointed. She is also serving as the Clynes Chair in Judicial Ethics at Notre Dame Law School.

A reception will follow the lecture in Eck Commons. Read More

Ross Douthat spoke at NDLS on April 25th to the Federalist Society on his new book, “Bad Religion, How We Became a Nation of Heretics."

Ross Douthat is the youngest opinion columnist in the history of the New York Times, has written for The Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard, GQ, Slate, and currently writes movie reviews for The National Journal. He is a regular on The Colbert Report and Charlie Rose, and has written three books, the third of which will be the subject of his talk on Wednesday. Read More

Column: Our forefathers got it right — no religious test
USA Today
Professor Gerald Bradley of Notre Dame Law School flatly declares that “no federal official has ever been subjected to a formal religious test for holding office.” Read More

The Notre Dame Law & Economics Program is presenting a symposium on “Markets & Regulation in the 21st Century” with featured guests Professor Roberta Romano (Yale Law School) and Judge Richard A. Posner (U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit; University of Chicago Law School).

The April 20 program will begin at 2:00 p.m. in Eck Hall 1130 when Professor Romano will present her paper, “For Diversity in the International Regulation of Financial Institutions: Rethinking the Basel Architecture.” Then, at 3:30 p.m., Judge Posner will present his paper, “The Nirvana Fallacy Revisited.” Read More