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The short answer: It depends on who you ask. The U.S. Constitution provides sparse detail on the impeachment process, and there has been little opportunity to establish precedent because impeachments are so rare (only two U.S. presidents have been formally impeached). Therefore, due process rights during impeachment are ill defined. What we do know is that due process is an important legal concept that goes all the way back to early English common law....

Dispute Over Parcel Surrounded By Indian Lands In Lyon v. Gila River Indian Comm., No. 08-15570, an action seeking a declaratory judgment that debtors’ estate had legal title and access to a parcel of land surrounded by Indian lands, the court affirmed partial judgment for plaintiffs where 1) the trustee’s claim of a pre-existing easement to access the parcel was not preempted by the existence of a regulatory scheme for obtaining new easements over Indian lands; and 2) the implied easement Arizona obtained from the federal government in 1877 was effectively conveyed to each subsequent purchaser of the parcel....

In a petition for review of the BIA’s order denying petitioner’s request for cancellation of removal, the petition is granted where Cuevas-Gaspar v. Gonzales, 430 F.3d 1013 (9th Cir. 2005), compelled the conclusion that a parent’s status as an alien lawfully admitted for permanent residence may be imputed to an unemancipated minor child residing with that parent, for purposes of satisfying the five-year permanent residence requirement for cancellation of removal under section 240A(a)(1) of the Immigration and Nationality Act....

In an assault prosecution, the denial of Petitioner’s habeas petition is affirmed, where the pretrial identification testimony presented at trial was not so impermissibly suggestive as to give rise to a very substantial likelihood of irreparable misidentification. Read Mills v. Cason, No. 06-2359 Appellate Information Argued: December 9, 2008 Decided and Filed: July 10, 2009 Judges Opinion by Judge Daughtrey Counsel For Appellant: Stephan J. Schlegelmilch, Baker & Hostetler LLP, Cleveland, OH...

The two formerly consolidated legal battles for same-sex marriage have now diverged, with one pushing forward in the Ninth Circuit, as well as possibly on the ballot, while the other is headed toward a special legislative session showdown. In Nevada, same sex-marriage advocates submitted their opening briefs this week in the Ninth Circuit with a “trickle down” equality sort of argument, while in Hawaii, both sides of the debate are gearing up for Monday’s legislative session....

When a federal judge spiked litigation funding agreements in a $1 billion settlement of NFL concussion cases, a lot of people thought it was over. The litigation funders, in particular, held their breath while the case went up on appeal. Luckily for them, the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals said the trial judge was out of bounds. It was close, but apparently the litigation funding game is still in play....

Two. Three. Four. And Five. Those are the relevant numbers in Monday’s Supreme Court decision on the Arizona immigration law. The Court rendered its decision exactly two months after hearing oral arguments on whether federal immigration policy preempts Arizona S.B. 1070. Monday, the Court struck three of four key sections of S.B. 1070, Huffington Post reports. There were five justices in the majority. Section 3, which created a state crime for being in the United States without proper authorization....

What happens in the juror room stays in the juror room (unless it’s a mock trial and you get to watch hidden cameras and the foreperson who is a lawyer in real life declares himself as such and misstates the law, causing you to lose your graded mock trial final – sorry, I’m still bitter). Gregory Warger was riding his motorcycle when Randy Shauers clipped him. Fault was at issue, as was the proper measure of damages, but in the end, the jury sided with Shauers....

On Sept. 5, U.S. District Court Judge for the Southern District of Florida Aileen M. Cannon appointed a special master to review some 11,000 documents obtained by the FBI in its search of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. This ruling essentially delegates to a third party the power to decide what documents the government can and can’t use in its criminal investigation of the former president. To many lawyers, this development is breathtaking....

In plaintiff’s employment discrimination lawsuit under Title VII, summary judgment for the Missouri Department of Corrections is affirmed where: 1) the district court correctly granted summary judgment on a hostile work environment claim as the offensive conduct did not constitute actionable harassment under Title VII; and 2) district court correctly granted the summary judgment on the retaliation claim as plaintiff failed to prove that a reasonable person would perceive as retaliatory the actions she found offensive, and actions by her co-workers are not sufficient to support a conclusion that they were materially adverse retaliatory actions....

In plaintiff’s employment discrimination suit against his former employer, summary judgment in favor of defendant is affirmed in part, reversed in part and remanded where: 1) the judgment of the district court is affirmed to the extent that it dismissed plaintiff’s ADA claims, his overtime claims, and his Title VII retaliation claim; but 2) judgment of the district court with respect to plaintiff’s hostile-workplace claim based on alleged sexual harassment is reversed and remanded as the court dismissed the claim after excluding most of the alleged instances of harassment as time-barred, contrary to Supreme Court precedent establishing that in a hostile-workplace claim, acts of harassment falling outside Title VII’s statute of limitations may be considered as long as some act of harassment occurred within the limitations period....

Let’s discuss the tale of Abdullah Al-Kidd. His case was recently reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court. But before we jump into the court’s decision, we need to lay out the facts of the case and what really happened to Abdullah Al-Kidd. Al-Kidd, a U.S. born athlete who once played football for the University of Idaho, was detained when boarding a plane for Saudi Arabia, back in 2003, writes The Spokesman Review....

Sentence for firearms possession is affirmed where government did not err in failing to file a motion under the federal sentencing guidelines which would have entitled defendant to a further sentencing discount for acceptance of responsibility as the the decision to file the motion is under the prosecutor’s discretion and there was nothing unreasonable about the government’s deciding not to file the motion in this case. Read US v. Deberry, No....

Illegal Reentry Sentence Vacated In US v. Ibarra-Luna, No. 09-40768, the court vacated defendant’s illegal reentry sentence where, under the discretionary sentencing regime of Booker and its progeny, the harmless error doctrine applied only if the proponent of the sentence convincingly demonstrated both: 1) that the district court would have imposed the same sentence had it not made the error, and 2) that it would have done so for the same reasons it gave at the prior sentencing, and defendant’s sentence did not meet this standard....

Petition for Review of Order of Removal Denied In Varughese v. Holder, No. 10-0467, a petition for review of a final order of removal issued by the BIA, the court denied the petition where 1) Immigration and Nationality Act section 101(a)(43)(D), which defined an “aggravated felony” as a money laundering offense in which “the amount of the funds exceeded $10,000,” 8 U.S.C. section 1101(a)(43)(D), captured only those violations of criminal statutes that use the specific word “funds”; and 2) because petitioner’s money laundering conviction rendered him ineligible for admissibility to the U....

The Supreme Court will not be reviewing a Fifth Circuit decision that found Texas’s voter identification requirements to be discriminatory. Texas had sought Supreme Court review after an en banc Fifth Circuit ruled, 9 to 6, that Texas’s strict voter ID law violated the Voting Rights Act. But the Fifth Circuit also remanded the case back to district court, for further consideration of whether the law was intentionally discriminatory. The cert denial, issued on Monday, won’t be the end of the dispute however....

“Has the Eighth Circuit gone nuts?” It’s a fair question, one posed by the venerable U.S. District Court Judge Richard Kopf after the Eighth Circuit affirmed a downward departure of between 135 and 168 months Abby Rae Cole. The trial court, which sentenced Cole to three years of probation, noted that she was part of “one of the largest corporate frauds in Minnesota history” (a $33 million rip-off of Best Buy) and “was also a significant tax fraud” (she dodged $3 million in taxes)....

On February 15, a lawyer representing nine families of the Sandy Hook massacre victims announced a $73 million settlement from Remington Arms, which made one of the firearms used in the shooting. Remington probably would have preferred to keep that amount secret. Sandy Hook was one of the most horrific mass shootings in U.S. history. On December 14, 2012, Adam Lanza shot his way into the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, and slaughtered 26 people, including 20 children....

More than five years after Florida State University law professor Dan Markel was fatally shot, the woman accused of acting as a go-between in his murder denied any involvement in the plot during the final day of testimony last week. Katherine Magbanua, who had personal connections to both Markel’s former brother-in-law and alleged trigger-man Sigfredo Garcia, said she had no personal knowledge of a murder-for-hire plot. However, prosecutors pointed to her relationship with Garcia and dubious sources of income to argue otherwise....

Some criminals surely capture our imaginations in ways that we don’t anticipate. Take the Wyoming man who seemed to see opportunity everywhere at a Sportsman’s Warehouse store. First, he stole a pair of sunglasses, some ammunition, and then our hearts. He returned a few hours later to ask for a job application, and steal some more sunglasses (‘cause why not?). Naturally, he was promptly arrested, ticketed and released during his return visit....