Fifth Circuit reinstates lawsuit alleging that the operation of energy, fossil fuels, and chemical industries in the United States caused the emission of greenhouse gasses that contributed to global warming, resulting in the harms caused by Hurricane Katrina: According to today’s ruling of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit:

Plaintiffs’ public and private nuisance claims assert that defendants intentionally and unreasonably used their property so as to produce massive amounts of greenhouse gasses and thereby injure both plaintiffs and the general public by contributing to global warming, which caused the sea level rise and added to the ferocity of Hurricane Katrina, the combined effects of which resulted in the destruction of plaintiffs’ private property, as well as their loss of use of certain public property in the vicinity of their dwellings.

Today’s ruling holds only that the plaintiffs have standing to assert these claims, and that the claims do not present non-justiciable political questions. Whether the claims have merit or are otherwise valid are issues that remain to be addressed, in the first instance by the trial court.

En banc U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit issues evenly divided ruling on lawsuit challenging the legality of the federal law known as the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001: You can access today’s order, affirming the federal district court’s ruling by an evenly divided court, at this link. In addition, four judges on the Sixth Circuit issued opinions totaling over 90 pages explaining their views of the case.

Back in January 2008, a three-judge Sixth Circuit panel issued this ruling on the case, and I had this post about the ruling on the day it issued.

Update: In news coverage of today’s ruling, The Associated Press reports that “Feds prevail in dispute over education law.”

Does this ruling issued today exemplify or refute the Second Circuit’s supposed distaste for en banc rehearings? I and others have remarked on occasion about the Second Circuit’s notable unwillingness to use the rehearing en banc procedure provided under the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure. A decision that a three-judge panel issued today (see page 4 of the PDF ruling) shows that the Second Circuit is not reluctant to use a procedural shortcut to a full-flung rehearing en banc to overrule an earlier Second Circuit ruling.

If a co-conspirator in a bank robbery is accidentally killed in a car crash that occurs while attempting to flee from police, does federal law mandate life sentences for those convicted of the offense? A divided three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit issued this interesting decision today.

The federal statute at issue, 18 U.S.C. sec. 2113(e), provides:

Whoever, in committing any offense defined in this section, or in avoiding or attempting to avoid apprehension for the commission of such offense, or in freeing himself or attempting to free himself from arrest or confinement for such offense, kills any person, or forces any person to accompany him without the consent of such person, shall be imprisoned not less than ten years, or if death results shall be punished by death or life imprisonment.

According to the lead opinion issued today:

Read literally, this suggests that a killing carries a mandatory minimum sentence of ten years, but a killing in which death results carries a mandatory minimum sentence of life imprisonment. Needless to say, this purports to set out a nonsensical distinction, since every killing, by definition, results in death.

To be sure, the statute is not a praiseworthy example of legislative draftsmanship, yet the statute seem to be saying that if someone is taken hostage in an escape or attempted escape, the minimum penalty is ten years in prison, but where death results from an escape attempt, the minimum sentence is life imprisonment. Thus, the statute could be construed in a way that is not entirely nonsensical, although it certainly can also be construed in a nonsensical manner.

“White House readies phone-tap case concession”: At Politico.com, Josh Gerstein and John Bresnahan have an article that begins, “The Obama administration may be on the verge of a major concession in a long-running legal battle over records about so-called telecom immunity.”

“3rd Circuit Rejects Online Activists’ Free-Speech Defense of Attacks on Animal Testing Firm; Defense attorney says he expects the ruling will be appealed and is ‘fairly sure we will wind up in the U.S. Supreme Court'”: Shannon P. Duffy has this article today in The Legal Intelligencer.

My earlier coverage of Wednesday’s Third Circuit ruling appears here and here.

“Queen Elizabeth II opens new UK Supreme Court”: The Associated Press has this report.

And at “The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times,” Tony Mauro has a post titled “Isaac Lidsky: From Supreme Court to London for Akin Gump.”