abused its discretion

Anthony Faretta was charged with grand theft in an information filed in the Superior Court of Los Angeles County, California. At the arraignment, the Superior Court Judge assigned to preside over the case appointed the public defender to represent him. Two and a half months later, Faretta requested that the judge allow him to represent himself. The judge questioned him about his ability to conduct his own defense. Faretta replied that he had some experience with the law. He had once represented himself in a criminal prosecution. He had a high school education. The judge initially accepted Faretta's waiver of the assistance of counsel in a preliminary ruling. The judge indicated that he might reverse this ruling if it later appeared that Faretta was unable adequately to represent himself. Several weeks thereafter, the judge sua sponte held a hearing to inquire into Faretta's ability to conduct his own defense. The judge questioned him specifically about both the hearsay rule and the state law governing the challenge of potential jurors. After consideration of Faretta's answers, the judge observed his demeanor. The judge ruled that Faretta had not made an intelligent and knowing waiver of his right to the assistance of counsel. The judge also ruled that Faretta had no constitutional right to conduct his own defense. The judge reversed his earlier ruling and appointed the public defender to represent Faretta. Faretta's subsequent request for leave to act as cocounsel was rejected. His efforts to make motions on his own behalf were rejected. Throughout the subsequent trial, the judge required that Faretta's defense be conducted only through the appointed lawyer from the public defender's office. At the conclusion of the trial, the jury found Faretta guilty as charged. The judge sentenced him to prison. The California Court of Appeal affirmed the trial judge's ruling that Faretta had no federal or state constitutional right to represent himself. A petition for rehearing was denied without opinion. The California Supreme Court denied review. The Supreme Court granted certiorari.

In May 1994 Paula Corbin Jones, a California resident who had worked at the Arkansas Industrial Development Commission, filed suit in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas against William Jefferson Clinton, then President of the United States, and Danny Ferguson, a former Arkansas State Police officer. The complaint alleged that on May 8, 1991, while Clinton was Governor of Arkansas and attending an official conference at the Excelsior Hotel in Little Rock, Ferguson persuaded Jones to leave the registration desk and visit Clinton in a business suite where he made unwanted sexual advances that she rejected. Jones further alleged that after she refused the advances her superiors at the Commission treated her in a hostile and rude manner and changed her duties in retaliation. After Clinton became President, Ferguson made defamatory statements to a reporter implying she had accepted the advances, while Clinton's authorized spokespersons publicly branded her a liar by denying the incident. The four-count complaint asserted federal claims under 42 U.S.C. §§ 1983 and 1985 plus state-law claims for intentional infliction of emotional distress and defamation, seeking $75,000 in actual damages and $100,000 in punitive damages. Jurisdiction was predicated on federal-question and diversity grounds. With the exception of the defamation count, the alleged misconduct occurred before Clinton took office and was unrelated to any official presidential duties. Clinton promptly advised the District Court that he intended to file a motion to dismiss on grounds of Presidential immunity. He requested the court to defer all other pleadings and motions until after the immunity issue was resolved. Petitioner thereupon filed a motion to dismiss without prejudice and to toll any statutes of limitation until he is no longer President. The District Court denied the motion to dismiss, allowed discovery to proceed, but stayed the trial until the end of the presidency. Both parties appealed. A divided panel of the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed the denial of dismissal on immunity grounds but reversed the stay of trial, holding that the District Court had abused its discretion. The Supreme Court granted certiorari.

In October 1999, nineteen private organizations filed a rulemaking petition with the EPA requesting regulation of greenhouse gas emissions from new motor vehicles under section 202 of the Clean Air Act. The petition asserted that carbon dioxide and other gases were heat-trapping greenhouse gases that had accelerated climate change, with carbon dioxide as the most important contributor according to the IPCC's 1995 report. The EPA received more than fifty thousand comments after requesting public input in 2001. A National Research Council report from 2001, prepared at the White House's request, stated that greenhouse gases from human activities were causing surface air temperatures to rise. On September 8, 2003, the EPA denied the petition on two grounds: the Clean Air Act did not authorize regulation of greenhouse gases from motor vehicles, and even assuming authority, the agency would not regulate due to scientific uncertainty about causation and concerns that regulation would conflict with the President's comprehensive approach involving voluntary programs and international negotiations. The denial order referenced Congress's decision in 1990 not to enact binding emissions limitations and the political history of climate change issues. Petitioners including the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and other states and private organizations then sought review in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The D.C. Circuit denied the petition for review in 2005. The Supreme Court granted certiorari in 2006 to address the issues raised by the denial. Massachusetts submitted affidavits showing that global sea levels rose 10 to 20 centimeters over the 20th century, already causing loss of coastal land owned by the Commonwealth, with projections of further inundation by 2100. The United States transportation sector alone emitted more than 1.7 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide in 1999, accounting for over 6 percent of worldwide emissions.

In 1973, Robert Joiner began work as an electrician in the Water & Light Department of Thomasville, Georgia. This job required him to work with and around the City's electrical transformers, which used a mineral-oil-based dielectric fluid as a coolant. Joiner often had to stick his hands and arms into the fluid to make repairs. The fluid would sometimes splash onto him, occasionally getting into his eyes and mouth. In 1983 the City discovered that the fluid in some of the transformers was contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Joiner was diagnosed with small-cell lung cancer in 1991. He sued petitioners in Georgia state court the following year. Petitioner Monsanto manufactured PCBs from 1935 to 1977; petitioners General Electric and Westinghouse Electric manufactured transformers and dielectric fluid. In his complaint Joiner linked his development of cancer to his exposure to PCBs and their derivatives, polychlorinated dibenzofurans (furans) and polychlorinated dibenzodioxins (dioxins). Joiner had been a smoker for approximately eight years, his parents had both been smokers, and there was a history of lung cancer in his family. Petitioners removed the case to federal court. Once in federal court, petitioners moved for summary judgment. They contended that there was no evidence that Joiner suffered significant exposure to PCBs, furans, or dioxins, and that there was no admissible scientific evidence that PCBs promoted Joiner's cancer. Joiner responded that there were numerous disputed factual issues that required resolution by a jury. He relied largely on the testimony of expert witnesses. In depositions, his experts had testified that PCBs alone can promote cancer and that furans and dioxins can also promote cancer. They opined that since Joiner had been exposed to PCBs, furans, and dioxins, such exposure was likely responsible for Joiner's cancer. The experts included Dr. Arnold Schecter, who testified that it was more likely than not that Mr. Joiner's lung cancer was causally linked to cigarette smoking and PCB exposure, and Dr. Daniel Teitelbaum, who testified that Joiner's lung cancer was caused by or contributed to in a significant degree by the materials with which he worked. The District Court ruled that there was a genuine issue of material fact as to whether Joiner had been exposed to PCBs. But it nevertheless granted summary judgment for petitioners because there was no genuine issue as to whether Joiner had been exposed to furans and dioxins. The testimony of Joiner's experts had failed to show that there was a link between exposure to PCBs and small-cell lung cancer. The court believed that the testimony of respondent's experts to the contrary did not rise above subjective belief or unsupported speculation. The Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit reversed. It held that because the Federal Rules of Evidence governing expert testimony display a preference for admissibility, it applied a particularly stringent standard of review to the trial judge's exclusion of expert testimony. The Supreme Court granted petitioners' petition for a writ of certiorari in 1997.

The litigation arose from the July 13, 1982 crash of a Navy T-34C Turbo-Mentor aircraft at Middleton Field, Alabama, during touch-and-go exercises. Lieutenant Commander Barbara Ann Rainey, a flight instructor, and her student Ensign Donald Bruce Knowlton were killed when the plane banked sharply right after a premature left turn, lost altitude, and crashed. The surviving spouses of the pilots filed a product liability action against Beech Aircraft Corporation, the manufacturer, and Beech Aerospace Services, Inc., which serviced the plane, alleging that a defect in the fuel control system caused an engine rollback and loss of power. Because the aircraft was destroyed and there were no survivors, the cause of the accident could not be determined from the available evidence. The defense presented an investigative JAG Report prepared by Lieutenant Commander William Morgan pursuant to Navy authority. The report contained sections on findings of fact, opinions, and recommendations, including statements that the engine was operating at reduced power at impact and that the most probable cause was the pilots' failure to maintain proper interval, while noting the possibility of rollback. Five or six months after the accident, plaintiff John Rainey, the deceased pilot's husband and a Navy flight instructor, sent a letter to Morgan outlining his own investigation and concluding that the most probable cause was a loss of useful power due to a pneumatic sensing or fuel flow malfunction. At trial, the defense called Rainey as an adverse witness and questioned him about portions of the letter concerning his wife's attempt to cancel the flight and a hard right turn by the aircrew. On cross-examination, the court sustained an objection to a question asking whether Rainey had stated in the letter that rollback was the most probable primary cause. After a two-week trial, the jury returned a verdict for the defendants. A panel of the Eleventh Circuit reversed, and on rehearing en banc the court divided evenly on one issue while unanimously holding that the district court erred in restricting cross-examination. The Supreme Court granted certiorari.