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

Last month the unnamed corporation at the center of a dispute over a grand jury subpoena that is widely believed to be connected to the investigation of Special Counsel Robert Mueller asked the Supreme Court for permission to file a petition for review under seal. Today the Supreme Court granted that permission and made a… Read More

In 2008, the Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to have a handgun at home for self-defense. Two years later, the justices made clear that this right also applies against state and local governments. Since then the Supreme Court has repeatedly declined to say anything more about how far states… Read More

UPDATE: On Friday, January 18, the Supreme Court announced that it had removed the case from the February argument calendar and suspended the briefing schedule “pending further order of this Court.” Although the justices will not hear oral argument in the case in February, today’s order does not foreclose the possibility that the case could… Read More

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