Covering the Supreme Court and the Judiciary in (mostly) Plain English

Two and a half years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that Missouri’s policy of excluding churches from a program to provide grants to resurface playgrounds violated the Constitution. In a footnote in their opinion in Trinity Lutheran Church v. Comer, the justices emphasized that their decision was limited to the facts before them and did “not… Read More

It has been nearly six and a half years since allies of Chris Christie, then the governor of New Jersey, created gridlock on the streets of Fort Lee by eliminating two of the three lanes on the George Washington Bridge reserved for drivers accessing the bridge from the New Jersey city. William Baroni, whom Christie… Read More

UPDATE: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has directed the challengers to file a response to the government’s application by Wednesday, January 22, at 3 p.m. This afternoon the federal government called on the Supreme Court to intervene in a dispute over a new rule, known as the “public charge” rule, governing the admission of immigrants to… Read More

This morning the Supreme Court issued additional orders from the justices’ private conference last Friday. After granting three new petitions for review last week, the justices did not add any new cases to their merits docket for the fall. They called for the views of the federal government in three cases, but they did not… Read More

This afternoon the Supreme Court issued orders from the justices’ private conference earlier in the day. The justices had considered a wide variety of hot-button issues – ranging from challenges to two states’ “faithless elector” laws to a clash between California and the federal government over enforcement of federal immigration laws and a challenge to… Read More

For residents of Fort Lee, New Jersey, the first day of school in September 2013 was a memorable one – and not in a good way. The traffic patterns on the George Washington Bridge, which crosses the Hudson River into New York at Fort Lee, had been abruptly altered, so that only one lane (instead… Read More

Update: On Friday, January 3, the states and the House of Representatives had asked the court to fast-track consideration of their motion to expedite review of their petitions by directing the respondents to file their opposition to the motion by January 7, which would allow the justices to consider the motion at their January 10… Read More

It has been nearly a half-century since Congress gave the Federal Trade Commission the right to represent itself before the Supreme Court, at least when the U.S. solicitor general, who normally represents the federal government before the court, declines to do so. That right is rare among federal agencies, and the FTC has exercised it… Read More

On March 4, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in one of the biggest cases of the new year: the challenge to the constitutionality of a Louisiana law that requires doctors who perform abortions to have the right to admit patients at a nearby hospital. Four years ago, the justices struck down a similar… Read More

Any review of a calendar year at the Supreme Court necessarily includes two different terms: the term that ends in June and the new one that begins in October and will run into the following year. But a look back at 2019, in particular, reveals two very different terms. In the wake of the June… Read More