UPDATES & ANALYSIS
Iowa Supreme Court Divided on Use of Balancing Test to Weigh “Confidential Personnel Records” Exemption to Open Records Requests
Eighth Circuit to District Court: Don’t Be Cruel
By Ryan Koopmans
In a dispute over the ownership of a vast collection of Elvis Presley memorabilia, the Eighth Circuit this week reversed a summary judgment order granted by the District Court for the Southern District of Iowa on a claim for conv …
Supreme Court: Tax Credit Film Budgets Not Confidential
[The following summary was written by Ryan Stefani, a law clerk in Nyemaster Goode’s summer program.]
On July 27, 2012, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled that filmmakers who received tax credits from the state must disclose their final budget summar …
Iowa Supreme Court Strips Live Nude Dancing Theaters of Regulation by Local Ordinances
8th Circuit: South Dakota Can Require Doctors to Warn Abortion-Seekers of Increased Suicide Risk
By Ryan Koopmans
In an en banc opinion released this week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit upheld the portion of a 2005 South Dakota law that requires doctors to warn women that having an abortion could result in an increased ris …
FEATURED POSTS
An Iowan on the Supreme Court? It’s happened before.
As Ryan noted here Monday, Eighth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Jane Kelly of Cedar Rapids has been mentioned as a potential nominee by President Obama to replac …
Amici will get oral-argument time in Iowa Supreme Court voting case
By Ryan Koopmans
Last week, the Iowa Supreme Court told the seven amici in Griffin v. Pate (the case that will decide what types of crimes are “infamous” under the Iowa Constitution) that they could participate in oral argument if the …
Could an Iowan soon sit on the nation’s highest court?
By Ryan Koopmans
I join the the legal community and the country in mourning the passing of Justice Antonin Scalia. I applied to law school because I thought it’d help me get a job as a Wall Street banker; I decided to become a lawyer, in large part, because of Justice Scalia. …
Rox Laird, veteran Iowa courts commentator, joins On Brief
By Ryan Koopmans
Rox Laird, former Des Moines Register editorial writer and Iowa courts commentator, is joining this blog as a regular contributor. Rox retired from the Register last fall and, as former Register editor and NBC News president M …
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On Brief: Iowa’s Appellate Blog is devoted to appellate litigation with a focus on the Iowa Supreme Court, the Iowa Court of Appeals, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.