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

Next week the justices will return to the bench for the first time since the end of June. The new term is already full of interesting cases, including the very first one on Monday, October 7: Kahler v. Kansas, in which the Supreme Court will consider whether the Constitution allows a state to abolish the… Read More

For over a century, a criminal defendant in Louisiana (except in capital cases) could be convicted without a unanimous verdict from the jury. In 2018, the state’s voters repealed the non-unanimity rule, leaving Oregon as the only state in the nation that does not require a unanimous verdict. However, the change to Louisiana law only… Read More

The Supreme Court cleared the way for the execution of Robert Sparks, who has been sentenced to die by lethal injection in Texas for the brutal triple murder of his wife and two stepsons. There were no recorded dissents from tonight’s order, which denied both Sparks’ petition for review of the lower court’s ruling against… 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

Two 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 address religious… Read More

The Supreme Court issued its calendar for the December sitting today. The justices are scheduled to kick off the sitting, which begins on Monday, December 2, with the oral argument in the challenge to New York City’s ban on transporting guns outside the city’s limits. But it’s not clear that the oral argument will actually… Read More

In 2012, the Obama administration established a program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which allows undocumented young adults who came to the United States as children to apply for protection from deportation. Applicants who meet a variety of criteria – for example, who have graduated from high school or served in the… Read More

On Monday, October 7, the first Monday in October, the justices of the Supreme Court will return to the bench for the first oral arguments of the new term. The next day, the court will tackle a trio of cases that could prove to be some of the biggest of the term. At issue is… Read More

Three days after finishing radiation treatment for pancreatic cancer, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg spoke in Buffalo, NY, yesterday. The 86-year-old justice received an honorary doctorate from the State University of New York, becoming the first Supreme Court justice to do so. The university reported that the justice also participated in a question-and-answer session with the… Read More