The VLW Blog

Feeling the urge to get out of the office?  Want to expand your legal knowledge base?  We have just the ticket.
If you’re near Lexington on Tuesday, take in the annual Supreme Court Preview at the Washington and Lee law school.  Highlights will include Prof. Brian Murchison addressing fleeting expletives and Prof. Adam Scales discussing FDA […]

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The Washington Post reports that the U.S. Supreme Court has removed its bar to Virginia’s planned execution of Danville murderer Christopher Emmett. The move sharpens the focus on the 4th Circuit, which is considering Emmett’s challenge to the method of execution.

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We’re still waiting for the Virginia Lawyers Weekly interview with Antonin Scalia, but if you have been wondering why the notably media-wary justice has suddenly embraced electronic attention (other than book promotion, of course), there’s this bite from a new Brian Lamb interview with Scalia on C-SPAN:
“I’ve sort of come to the conclusion that the […]

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The United States Supreme Court is one of the world’s most imposing government buildings. The facade is designed to impress, with 44 steps leading to the columned entrance. The Court’s own website describes the doors:
“One can enter the building through the opened bronze doors of the west front, each of which weighs six […]

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A unanimous U.S. Supreme Court ruled today that the illegality of a search under Virginia law does not require the suppression of evidence seized during the search.
Writing for the court in Virginia v. Moore, Justice Antonin Scalia said in that the high court long has held that probable cause to arrest justifies a search. Virginia […]

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Our DC-based colleague over at Lawyers USA, Kim Atkins, was down at the U.S. Supreme Court today, listening to argument in a case from Portsmouth, Virginia v. Moore.
It’s a search case that has already been through the Supreme Court of Virginia, where the defendant prevailed.
But 18 attorneys general from other states have backed […]

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A Department of Motor Vehicles record that a defendant was notified of his habitual offender status by law enforcement did not establish that he received actual notice of his determination as an habitual offender, the Supreme Court of Virginia ruled today.
The DMV record entry, “Notified: 2001/03/10 by law enforcement,” “does not specify the content of […]

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Many lawyers in Virginia may never take an appeal to the Supreme Court of Virginia, let alone the U.S. Supreme Court.
But law students at the University of Virginia, working in the school’s Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, will be able to put a trip to the nation’s high court on their resumes. One of their […]

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