On April 4, 2011, the Supreme Court granted only two certiorari petitions, and both are from the Supreme Court Litigation Clinic’s docket.

In the first case, Florence v. Board of Chosen Freeholders of the County of Burlington, the clinic represents the plaintiff in a civil rights lawsuit arguing that a jail violates the Fourth Amendment if it conducts suspicionless strip searches of all admittees no matter what the charges or circumstances of their arrests. Clinic law students Jud Campbell (‘11), Jacqueline de Armas (‘11), and Kathryn McCann (‘12) prepared the petition under the supervision of team leader and clinic lecturer, Tom Goldstein.   See coverage on SCOTUSblog and Westlaw News & Insight.

In the second case, Greene v. Fisher, the clinic represents a state prisoner arguing that he may obtain federal habeas corpus relief based on a violation of a United States Supreme Court decision announced after the last state-court decision on the merits of his direct appeal but before that appeal became final. In other words, petitioner argues that the retroactivity regime that the Supreme Court announced in 1989 in Teague v. Lane remains good law after the enactment of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA). Clinic law students Thomas Scott (‘11), Andrew Zahn (‘11), and Kathryn McCann (’12) prepared the petition under the supervision of the clinic’s co-director, Jeffrey Fisher.  See coverage on SCOTUSblog:

The clinic will now proceed to brief both cases on the merits and to present oral argument next fall.