Bassam Salman, a Chicago grocery wholesaler, received stock tips from a friend, who had in turn received inside information from Salman’s brother-in-law, an investment banker at Citigroup. Salman made hundreds of thousands of dollars from the tips, but he was also charged with insider trading and sentenced to three years in prison. Today the Supreme… Read More

When the justices return to the bench in January, they will face a nearly full argument calendar: nine arguments over five days of oral arguments. (No arguments are scheduled on the tenth day in the sitting, January 16, because it is a federal holiday.) The January calendar, which was released yesterday, includes several high-profile cases,… Read More

“It is a very tough matter,” observed Justice Stephen Breyer, summarizing the questions with which the justices were grappling today. Federal law permits (and sometimes requires) states to consider race when drawing district lines, to create legislative districts in which a majority of voters are members of a minority group, but at the same time… Read More

In overviews of the Supreme Court’s current term, the conventional wisdom is that the court is mostly shying away from controversial cases and topics, as it waits to learn when it will have a ninth justice and who that justice will be. There are currently no cases on the docket involving, for example, abortion, affirmative… Read More

It was, as attorney Clifford Sloan – who represents Texas death-row inmate Bobby James Moore – a “vitally important, life-or-death” issue: Does the scheme that Texas uses to determine whether an inmate is intellectually disabled, and therefore cannot be executed, violate the Constitution? Perhaps reflecting the significance of the case, today’s oral argument included some… Read More

In 2002, in Atkins v. Virginia, the Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment bars the execution of individuals who are intellectually disabled. The court did not, however, provide detailed guidelines on how states should determine whether someone is intellectually disabled, leaving that job to the states. Twelve years later,… Read More

Following yesterday’s dismissal of Visa v. Osborn and Visa v. Stoumbos, the Supreme Court today issued a new calendar for its December sitting, which begins on November 28. The two Visa cases, which had been consolidated for one hour of oral arguments, had been scheduled for argument on Wednesday, December 7 — the only argument… Read More

Only hours after Donald Trump was declared the winner in last night’s presidential election, it was business as usual in at least one Washington institution: the Supreme Court of the United States. With the seat left open by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia still vacant, presumably to be filled with the president-elect’s nominee, the… Read More

In 2013, the city of Miami filed what seemed to many to be an ambitious lawsuit against Bank of America and Wells Fargo. It argued that the two banks had discriminated against African-American and Latino borrowers in issuing mortgages that were particularly likely to lead to foreclosure. The foreclosures were widespread, with near-catastrophic effects on… Read More

Today the justices heard oral argument in a challenge to the government’s interpretation of the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998, a law that (among other things) allows the duties and responsibilities of an executive branch official who requires Senate confirmation to be carried out by someone else, serving in an acting capacity. As I… Read More