SCOPAblog

This month on SCOPAblog, the Court rejects creative challenges to local gun-safety regulations and constitutional challenges to the warrantless seizure of firearms during traffic stops.

This month on SCOPAblog, the election takes center stage before the Court, specifically mail-in ballot provisions. Plus, the Court issues a Rule Change worth reviewing for most practicing attorneys who wish to keep a call from the Disciplinary Board at bay.

This month on SCOPAblog, the author celebrates a constitutional win in Krasner, the newest Justice comments on capital punishment, and commercial liability insurers the Commonwealth 'round are likely breathing a sigh of relief.

This month on SCOPAblog, the Justices review free speech provisions of the Pennsylvania constitution. Bonus, the Commonwealth Court finds the disqualification of misdated mail-in ballots unconstitutional.

This month on SCOPAblog, although the docket may look a bit dry this summer on the opinion side, the Court's decision in Shirley contains something of a hidden aquifer for appellate enthusiasts.  On the allocatur side, I'm most interested in Shivers, which involves whether a defendant's flight from police in a "'high crime' area" can amount to reasonable suspicion that he is engaged in criminal activity for purposes of the Pennsylvania constitutional right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures—a pratice which has been roundly criticized.

This month on SCOPAblog, the Court's two criminal opinions offer glosses on Commonwealth v. Bradley, in which the Court previously recognized a procedural path for petitioners in postconviction cases to challenge the stewardship of postconviction counsel. The Court's conception of Bradley is still far from clear, but Parrish and Greer offer a little more illumination.

This month on SCOPAblog, I'm most interested in Torsilieri.  In that case, the court faced two challenges to Pennsylvania's sexual offender registration and notification regime: (1) a claim that the statute was predicated on an false, irrebutable presumption that sexual offenders are highly likely to reoffend; and (2) a claim that the statute imposed requirements that were essentially equivalent to probation, were punitive, and were imposed without criminal procedural protections and were cruel and unusual punishment.  A distinguishing factor of the case is that, unlike prior challenges to prior iterations of Pennsylvania's sexual offender registration regimes, the trial court in this matter decided in favor of Torsilieri.

This month on SCOPAblog, the court issued 5 precedential opinions and 13 grants of allocatur.  On the allocatur side, the Court is on something of a roll.  In the criminal context, it has granted several cases that appear to involve challenges to long-frustrating problems in criminal practice.  For example, in Lewis, it appears poised to drill down on the longstanding problem of what constitutes a "high crime area" for purposes of the detention of criminal suspects. Although I have previously written that the Court's interest in the reassessment of unfair criminal procedural rules has waned, I would be happy for the Court to make a liar out of me.

This month on SCOPAblog, I am most interested in N.E.M. wherein the Court's statements might be read as evincing some ambivalence about the gap of appellate review in theory and in practice. Are Pennsylvania appellate courts reasonably staffed and funded to fulfill their purposes?

This month on SCOPAblog, I'm most interested in Salsberg, in which the Court has for all intents and purposes recognized an arguably new tort in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania: intentional interference with an at-will employment relationship. On the allocatur side, I'm most interested in Lee, which raises a challenge to Pennsylvania's mandatory sentence of life imprisonment for individuals convicted of second-degree murder, as applied to individuals who are convicted of so-called felony murder for committing or conspiring to commit a felony during which another individual commits a murder.

This month on SCOPAblog, the Court paves the way for a challenge to the ban on public funding for medical-assistance-patient abortions.

This month on SCOPAblog, I'm most interested in Washington, in which Justice Christine Donohue authors a fairly stirring and excellently thorough majority opinion about the interstices of procedural due process, among other legal questions, ultimately in service of a holding that correctional facilities cannot unilaterally and without notice and an opportunity to be heard take inmates' money via legislatively sanctioned deductions from prison accounts. 

This month on SCOPAblog, the Court further liberalizes the law of venue and grants review to consider how to approach verdicts inconsistent with special jury interrogatories.

This month, I'm most interested in Conforti, a rare unanimous opinion affirming a trial court's order granting guilt-phase relief in a death penalty case. One of the more disturbing secrets of criminal practice is that the law governing constitutionally mandated disclosure of evidence is less than clear, and fairly complex, so it is often the case that district attorneys don't disclose what they're required to disclose. Justice Mundy, writing for the Court, attempts to provide some clarity where she can and identify some unclear issues for a future case. 

This month, the Court weighs in on constitutional procedural requirements for legislation, with mixed views, and grants review to consider three cases involving civil liability for sports-related activity. Put down your skis until you've read our September 2023 Docket Review.

This month, the Court rejects an attempt to extend alcohol-furnishment liability to social hosts, rejects the Commonwealth Court's efforts to give a litigant a second bite at the apple, and grants review to reconsider the rules for police inventory searches of automobiles.

This month on SCOPAblog, the Court addresses parent-unmarried partner adoptions and three cases involving the scope of civil liability, and grants review to consider insurance coverage for business losses sustained during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

This month, the Court issued 3 precedential opinions and 2 grants of allocatur, but sometimes quality trumps quantity. I'm most impressed by Rivera, which comments on the complexities of an accused's exercise of his privilege against self incrimination, but also between the different harmless error analyses applicable to pre-arrest and post-arrest silence.

This month, the Court issued 7 precedential opinions and 2 grants of allocatur. First, in Armolt, the court had something of a scrum over whether and how a party can waive a claim challenging the legality of sentence -- in this case, a claim of a violation of constitutional ex post facto principles, by failing to adequately develop it. One would imagine that the Court would have addressed this issue before, but, prior to the last decade or so, its decisions limited the kinds of claims that implicated the legality of sentencing to, more or less, patent conflicts with clear statutory requirements. 

This month, the headline-grabber is the quite shocking County of Fulton opinion, which outlines the County's, and its counsel's, course of defiance and vexatious litigation in connection with an earlier Supreme Court order directing it to cease providing third-parties access to its voting equipment pending litigation of its authority to do so. The opinion notes that the Court will refer counsel to disciplinary authorities, and concludes with a firm reiteration that defiance of judicial orders is an affront to the rule of law and harmful to adverse parties and the public interest. 

This month, Perrin provides some guidance as to whether parties in a criminal case can enter into stipulations in a post-conviction context, holding that the trial court is free to reject them because witness credibility is a matter reserved for the court. Notably, Justice Dougherty opines further that a court is not free to accept them, as stipulations are reserved for actual, tangible facts, which he views as exclusive of witness credibility. Green is also interesting, less for its holding that a statute regarding juvenile decertifications means what it says, but more for the cogent discussion of the absurdity canon.

This month on SCOPAblog, I'm most interested in the Court's decision in Ball, which holds that the Election Code's dating requirements for absentee and mail-in ballots are mandatory, rather than directory, such that they should not be counted. Perhaps the most interesting aspect is that the Court was equally divided on whether that interpretation of the Code occasions a violation of federal civil rights law.

This month, the Court issued 4 precedential opinions and 4 grants of allocatur. On the opinion side, I'm most interested in Avery, which interprets the "sore loser" provisions of the Election Code to limit the circumstances in which candidates for office can withdraw from a party primary and run as third-party candidates in the general election.

This month, the Court issued 3 precedential opinions and 2 grants of allocatur. On the opinion side, nothing so entertaining as a good Christmas movie, but a few interesting points worth making.  In Gibraltar Rock, the Court reemphasized that lower appellate courts should not raise issues sua sp...

The Court issued 3 precedential opinions and 2 allocatur grants in November 2022. This month on SCOPABlog, the Court reminds courts to stick the law and avoid getting too folksy in defining "reasonable doubt," and takes up review to address a conflict between the Adoption Act's mid-20th century mores and the reality of modern family arrangements.