In June 2012, President Barack Obama signed a policy known as “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals” (popularly known as DACA), a program that allows undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children to apply for protection from deportation. Today the federal government went to the Supreme Court, asking it to intervene immediately in… Read More

Last week a three-judge federal court in North Carolina struck down the state’s federal congressional map, ruling that Republicans had drawn the map to give themselves an advantage over Democrats – specifically, the court stressed, to guarantee Republicans’ “domination of the state’s congressional delegation.” The court ordered the state legislature to come up with a… Read More

(Note: This post was updated to add additional discussion of today’s order list, beginning after the discussion of Animal Sciences Products.) With time running out to add new cases to its merits docket for this term (at least without expedited briefing schedules), the Supreme Court announced this afternoon that it would take on 12 new… Read More

The Fourth Amendment and vehicle searches dominated oral arguments at the Supreme Court today. First up was Byrd v. United States, in which the justices are considering whether the driver of a rental car who was not included as an authorized driver on the rental agreement, but had the renter’s permission to use the car,… Read More

Less than a year after it issued an order suspending immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries, the Trump administration went to the Supreme Court tonight, asking the justices to uphold the third version of that order, often known as the “travel ban.” Unlike the earlier version of the order, the government explained, which was “premised… Read More

In November 2015, U.S. Navy veteran Larry Harmon went to the polls near his home in Ohio to vote. He learned, however, that he would not be able to do so because he had been removed from the state’s voter rolls. Harmon had lived in the same place for more than 16 years, but he… Read More

As a general rule, the Fourth Amendment requires police to have a warrant to conduct a search. But the courts have carved out a variety of exceptions to that general rule, including one known as the “automobile exception”: It allows police to search a vehicle without a warrant if the vehicle is “readily mobile” and… Read More

When you rent a car, there are often extra charges – as much as $13 per day – to have an additional authorized driver on your rental agreement. These fees can add up, but there could soon be another reason to pay them: Depending on how the Supreme Court rules in the upcoming case of… Read More

Chief Justice John Roberts released his year-end report on the federal judiciary tonight. In 2016, Roberts used the report to pay homage to what he regarded as the unsung hero of the federal judiciary: the federal district judge, whom he described as a “capable administrator” but also an “active and astute problem solver.” Roberts’ 2017… Read More

The Supreme Court today released the calendar for its February sitting, which starts on Tuesday, February 20 (because Monday, February 19, is a federal holiday) and ends on Wednesday, February 28. The justices will hear nine oral arguments over five days, with the highest-profile argument of the sitting coming on February 26 in Janus v…. Read More