South Carolina Lawyers Weekly

Where Virginia’s death row inmates were subject to confinement conditions that posed a substantial risk of serious psychological and emotional harm when they first filed their lawsuit, but changes made while the lawsuit was pending ended any Eighth Amendment violation, ...

North Carolina’s ban on the unauthorized practice of law is not constitutionally infirm as applied to a trade association because it does not restrict the association’s speech, association or related rights and does not violate the state’s Monopoly Clause. Background ...

In a matter of first impression, we will not create an implied cause of action for wrongful conviction in South Carolina because it is not for this court to create such an action when the legislature has specifically declined to ...

A parole board is not required to consider age-related mitigating characteristics of a defendant who was sentenced in 1988 when he was 17, to life with the possibility of parole. While the Supreme Court has addressed the sentencing of minors ...

Where the circuit court’s order merely granted plaintiff’s motion to enforce the parties’ settlement agreement, Rule 52(a), SCRCP, did not require the circuit court to state its findings of fact and conclusions of law. Therefore, the circuit court did not ...

A school did not violate the Establishment or Free Speech clauses by presenting an 11th-grade history unit that provided information about Islam, and tested a student’s understanding of that knowledge through a test. Background During the 2014-2015 school year, Caleigh ...

The plaintiff-county alleges the defendant-city and the South Carolina Department of Transportation, while engaged in a joint water drainage project, altered the water table, causing sinkholes to form and damaging public buildings and real property owned by the county. The ...

Plaintiffs’ First Amendment rights were not violated when a transit authority revoked their access to certain restricted property even though the revocation was made in retaliation to activities protected under the First Amendment.   Background Plaintiff David McClure is the ...

Although neither the U.S. Supreme Court nor any Circuit has addressed whether a governmental social media page constitutes a public forum, the court found aspects of the Loudon County Board Chair’s Facebook page bear the hallmarks of a public forum. ...

In rejecting the commonwealth’s challenge to a decision that a state law, which allows incumbent members of the General Assembly to dictate the method their party shall use in selecting the nominee for the office that incumbent holds, violates the ...