The Constitution’s double jeopardy clause guarantees that no one shall “be twice put in jeopardy” “for the same offence.” Today the Supreme Court upheld a longstanding interpretation of that clause, known as the “separate sovereigns” doctrine. By a vote of 7-2, the justices rejected a challenge to the doctrine by an Alabama man who argued that… Read More

Last week Virginia held its primary election for the state’s House of Delegates. It used a new map, which had been drawn with the help of a court-appointed expert after a federal court threw out the old one. The lower court ruled that 11 districts were the product of unconstitutional racial gerrymandering – that is,… Read More

The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts released the justices’ annual financial disclosures for 2018 today. The forms do not provide a complete picture of the justices’ finances: They do not, for example, include the value of the justices’ homes, and the values of their stocks, investments and bank accounts are reported only in a… Read More

With less than three weeks to go before the Supreme Court’s summer recess, the challengers in the dispute over the decision to add a question about citizenship to the 2020 census yesterday asked the justices to postpone their ruling in the wake of new evidence in the case. In January, a federal district judge in… Read More

The Supreme Court added five new cases to its merits docket for next term, on topics ranging from international child-custody law to the statute of limitations in cases brought under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act. In Atlantic Richfield Co. v. Christian, the justices will review a case filed by landowners in Montana, who sued… Read More

By the end of June, the Supreme Court is expected to issue 27 more decisions in argued cases, on topics ranging from the constitutionality of a World War I memorial in the form of a cross on public land to partisan gerrymandering and the decision to add a question about citizenship to the census. We… Read More

U.S. Solicitor General Noel Francisco recently filed a bevy of briefs in response to the Supreme Court’s “invitations” to provide the justices with the federal government’s views on cases in which a petition for certiorari has been filed. If – as they overwhelmingly do – the justices follow the government’s recommendations, these petitions may not… Read More

Last week the challengers in the dispute over the decision to include a question about citizenship on the 2020 census notified the Supreme Court about new evidence. The new evidence, the challengers argued, indicated that a Republican redistricting strategist played a key role in the decision, which was intended to create an advantage for whites… Read More

[Editor’s Note: This post originally appeared, with a different title, last week, but has been updated to reflect today’s denial of the government’s motion to expedite the consideration of the petition.] Late last year, the federal government asked the Supreme Court to wade into the dispute over the Trump administration’s September 2017 decision to end the program… Read More

This morning the Supreme Court added three new cases to its merits docket for next term, on issues ranging from copyright law to criminal procedure and the Employee Income Retirement Security Act. Once again, however, the justices did not act on the case of an Oregon couple who declined to make a custom wedding cake… Read More