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

Ratified in 1933, the 21st Amendment ended Prohibition – which (fun fact!) was established by the 18th Amendment, ratified 100 years ago today. It also gave states broad power to regulate alcoholic beverages. At today’s oral argument in Tennessee Wine and Spirits Retailers Association v. Blair, the justices considered exactly how expansive that regulatory power… Read More

This morning the Supreme Court released another set of orders from the justices’ private conference last week. On Friday, the justices announced that they would add eight cases from that conference to their docket. Today’s list did not grant review in any new cases, but it was perhaps most significant for what it did not… Read More

One day after Politico reported that White House officials were preparing for the possible “death or departure” of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who had surgery in late December to remove two cancerous growths from her lungs, the Supreme Court announced today that there was no evidence of any other cancer, and that the 85-year-old Ginsburg… Read More

The Constitution’s 21st Amendment gives states the power to regulate the distribution of alcohol into and within a state, while a doctrine known as the dormant commerce clause (derived from the Constitution’s commerce clause) bars states from discriminating against interstate commerce. Next week the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in a challenge to a… Read More

Today the Supreme Court rejected a request by Virginia legislators to put lower-court proceedings in a case challenging the legislative districts drawn for the state’s House of Delegates as the product of unconstitutional racial gerrymandering – that is, the idea that legislators relied too much on race when drawing the maps — on hold until… Read More

UPDATE: Just a few hours after the unnamed corporation appealed to the Supreme Court, the justices denied the company’s request to put the lower court’s order requiring it to provide the information or pay penalties on hold. The justices also vacated the temporary stay that Chief Justice John Roberts had imposed on December 23. There… Read More

[Editor’s Note: This post was updated to cover the four cases in which the Supreme Court asked the U.S. solicitor general to file briefs.] The justices returned to the bench today for the first arguments of the new year. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who had surgery on December 21 to remove two cancerous growths from… Read More

This afternoon the justices issued orders from their private conference earlier in the day. In addition to the two partisan-gerrymandering cases set for argument in the March calendar session, the justices also granted review in four other new cases, involving issues ranging from “immoral” copyright marks to vagueness in a federal criminal law. In Iancu… Read More

Less than six months after sidestepping a ruling on partisan gerrymandering, the justices announced this afternoon that they will once again wade into the thorny issue of when (if ever) state officials violate the Constitution by drawing district lines to favor one political party at another’s expense, this time in cases from North Carolina and… Read More

UPDATE: On Sunday evening, Chief Justice John Roberts temporarily blocked the district court’s order requiring the foreign corporation to comply with the grand jury subpoena or pay penalties. In a brief order, the chief justice directed the government to respond by noon on December 31 and indicated that the district court’s order would remain on… Read More