Justice Samuel Alito acted quickly this afternoon to grant a request by Texas officials to block a lower court’s order that had invalidated the state’s maps for the Texas House of Representatives, the lower house of the Texas legislature. Today’s order putting the lower court’s ruling on hold came shortly after state officials filed their… Read More

In a one-sentence order issued this afternoon, Justice Samuel Alito blocked an order by a federal district court in Texas that had invalidated two congressional districts in that state. Officials in Texas had asked the district court to put its order on hold to give it time to appeal to the Supreme Court, but the… Read More

In June, the Supreme Court agreed to review a ruling by a three-judge federal district court striking down the redistricting plan that Wisconsin’s Republican-controlled legislature adopted after the 2010 census. Today the state of Texas asked the Supreme Court to step into another redistricting dispute, this time a long-running battle over that state’s congressional redistricting… Read More

The Supreme Court is currently in its summer recess, and the justices are not scheduled to meet to review new cases until September 25, when their “long conference” – at which they will consider the approximately 2,000 petitions that have accumulated since the end of June – will take place. But in a relatively unusual… Read More

On September 25, the justices will meet for their first conference after their summer recess, which is also known as the “long” conference. At that conference, they will consider more petitions than they do at any time of the year (usually somewhere around 2,000) but will grant relatively few – last year, the number was… Read More

In just a little over a month, the justices will meet to consider the many petitions for review that have accumulated since the Supreme Court’s summer recess began at the end of June. This post is the first in a series that will take a closer look at some of the petitions that have been… Read More

Most Americans are familiar with some parts of the Bill of Rights, such as the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech and the Second Amendment’s protection of the right to bear arms. Other provisions, however, are less well known – for example, the 10th Amendment, which provides that the “powers not delegated to the United… Read More

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has suggested that it might be the most important case of the upcoming term. On October 3, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in Gill v. Whitford, a challenge to the redistricting plan passed by Wisconsin’s Republican-controlled legislature in 2011. A federal court struck down the plan last year, concluding… Read More

In 1976, in United States v. Miller, the Supreme Court ruled that the bank records of a man accused of running an illegal whiskey-distilling operation were not obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment, even though law-enforcement officials did not have a warrant, because the bank records contained “only information voluntarily conveyed to the banks… Read More

Over  a dissent from Justice Sonia Sotomayor  that was joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Supreme Court last night declined to block the executions of three Ohio men. One of the inmates, Ronald Phillips, is scheduled to be put to death today for the 1993 rape and murder of his girlfriend’s daughter. Phillips and… Read More