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

The justices are expected to take the bench on Monday at 10 a.m. to issue opinions in argued cases. There are six decisions still outstanding, involving everything from cross-border shootings to the death penalty and public funding for playgrounds at religious preschools. To be sure, there is no guarantee that we will actually get opinions… Read More

Yesterday the Supreme Court sent the case of a Bosnian Serb woman who was stripped of her citizenship for lying to immigration officials back to the lower courts. The justices rejected the government’s argument that Divna Maslenjak could lose her citizenship simply by making false statements, no matter how trivial. Instead, the court ruled, Maslenjak’s… Read More

This morning the justices upheld the convictions of seven men who had been convicted of the brutal beating, sodomy, and murder of Catherine Fuller, a District of Columbia mother of six, in 1984. Writing for the court in Turner v. United States, Justice Stephen Breyer concluded that even if the prosecutors had given the defense… Read More

In 2000, Divna Maslenjak and her family came to the United States as refugees from the former Yugoslavia, fleeing the civil war in that country. Maslenjak became a U.S. citizen in 2007, but several years later she was stripped of her citizenship and deported – as was her husband – because immigration officials discovered that… Read More

This morning the Trump administration responded to yesterday’s brief by the state of Hawaii, which urged the justices to stay out of the dispute over the March 6 executive order, often known as the “travel ban,” which put a hold on visas for travelers from six Muslim-majority countries. Although Hawaii argued yesterday that a June… Read More

Calling the March 6 executive order signed by President Donald Trump, which put a temporary hold on visas for travelers from six Muslim-majority countries, “grossly unlawful,” the state of Hawaii today urged the Supreme Court to sit out the litigation over the legality of the order, popularly known as the “travel ban.” Instead, the state… Read More

During the almost 16 years since the September 11 attacks, litigation challenging the treatment of Middle Eastern men who were in the United States illegally at the time of the attacks and were detained for immigration violations has continued to wind its way through the courts. Several of those detainees, who are the plaintiffs in… Read More

When an inmate being held in a state prison believes that his conviction or sentence violated the U.S. Constitution, he can go to federal court to seek relief – a process known as “habeas corpus.” But once he is in federal court, it is not enough for the inmate to show simply that the state… Read More

In 2002, Lester Packingham became a convicted sex offender at the age of 21, after he pleaded guilty to taking indecent liberties with a child – having sex with a 13-year-old girl. Packingham got into hot water with the law again in 2010, when he posted on Facebook to thank God for having a traffic… Read More

The Supreme Court will once again wade into the world of partisan gerrymandering – that is, the practice of purposely drawing district lines to favor one party and put another at a disadvantage. The justices announced today that they will review Wisconsin’s appeal of the decision by a three-judge district court striking down, as the… Read More