Two cases await decisions at the Supreme Court for this term, Burwell v. Hobby Lobby and Harris v. Quinn. Hobby Lobby should address whether a for-profit corporation can have religious beliefs which it can express in the context of an Affordable Care Act provision which requires that health insurance policies include contraception benefits, where the corporation need not purchase insurance for its employees. Think I loaded the deck? Really, I didn’t, for this is the fact-pattern associated with Hobby Lobby and its companion cases.

Harris involves an Illinois statute that affects whether home health care workers must join a union, where the state pays those people through Medicaid. Hard to imagine the Court not finding the law unconstitutional, given

The Supreme Court issued three opinions yesterday. Here’s SCOTUSblog’s Tuesday Round-Up, with a brief summary of each case, along with links to commentary.

The big news related to Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA, No. 12-1146. The case involves the Clean Air Act and the EPA’s authority to regulate stationary sources of greenhouse gases. If I understand the decision correctly—a somewhat dubious proposition, and the major theme to this post—the EPA designed a regulatory scheme that amounted to a “less than allowed” amount of regulation, as adherence to the authority it was given would have created an unadministrable program. “No, no,” said Justice Antonin Scalia, the law neither permits nor compels such an outcome.

The day job calls,

Article II, Section 2 states, in part:  “The President shall have the power to fill up all vacancies that may happen during the recess of the Senate, by granting commissions which shall expire at the end of their next session.” The power to make recess appointments has been relatively non-controversial for more than two centuries. Until now!

The recess appointment provision was included in the Constitution to allow the government to function during times when the Senate was not in session. Over the past two-plus centuries the process has evolved. Appointments are made when the Senate is out of session for the year, but also during “intra-session” periods, when the Senate leaves for a week or two. Further, the

It’s Court-time, that busy time in June when the U.S. Supreme Court gets ready for its summer vacation. (Is there any hope for getting away from the ag-based, nine-month school year, when one of our three governmental branches has the summer off?)

Here are a few cases recent cases that caught my attention.

In Clark v. Rameker, No. 13-299, the Court issued a unanimous opinion holding that an inherited IRA does not qualify as an exempt asset. Justice Sotomayor, in her opinion, looks at the characteristics of an inherited IRS—no money can be added, money must be withdrawn, and all money can be withdrawn at any time without penalties—and reached the conclusion that the assets belongs to creditors in

On May 8, 2014, the Arizona Supreme Court issued an order establishing the Business Court Advisory Committee. The order direct the Advisory Committee to investigate establishing a division of the Superior Court—our trial court—to handle business disputes. The Arizona Republic ran Arizona Panel to Study Idea for Business Courts a few days later, and it provides a decent overview.

One of the great challenges for a business litigator involves deciding whether to arbitrate and, if not, whether a jury should be involved. In many instances these choices are made when a contract or other business agreement gets signed.

Arbitration is often a default choice, too often because it carries positive connotations and courts don’t. In fact, in many cases arbitration

I attended a dinner at a bank—as it happens, my bank—on Tuesday night. The topic?  Current Trends in Trust and Estate Planning. ‘Twas a fine presentation, with decent wine, a good meal, and a speaker worth listening to. And an hour of continuing education credit.

The speaker, a banker, focused his talk on dynasty trusts. There is no particular definition for a dynasty trust:  in simple terms it’s a trust that lasts a long time.

Now, I was in law school between 1978 and 1981, many years ago. I learned about the Rule against Perpetuities. This rule, as I learned it, held that no property in a trust could vest in a beneficiary after all lives in being