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

In June, the Supreme Court ruled that a 40-foot-tall cross, erected nearly a century ago in what is now a traffic circle outside Washington, D.C., as a memorial to soldiers killed during World War I, does not violate the Constitution. Eight days later, the justices agreed to review a decision by the Montana Supreme Court… Read More

On October 1, the justices will meet for the so-called “long conference” – their first conference since late June, at which they will vote on new cases for the upcoming term. There are, at least in theory, over a thousand petitions up for consideration at this conference, but most of those will be denied without… Read More

The Supreme Court tonight agreed to put on hold a lower-court ruling that had barred the government from spending $2.5 billion in Pentagon funds to build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico. The justices were divided along ideological lines: The court’s five more conservative justices voted to grant the government’s request, while the… Read More

When the Supreme Court returns to the bench in the fall, it will hear oral arguments on a variety of high-profile issues, including protection under federal employment laws for LGBT employees and the Trump administration’s decision to terminate the “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals” program, known as DACA, which allows undocumented immigrants who came to… Read More

Speaking at the judicial conference of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in June, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg told her audience that Justice Anthony Kennedy’s 2018 retirement was “the event of greatest consequence for the current Term, and perhaps for many Terms ahead.” Less than three weeks later, Ginsburg’s assessment proved accurate… Read More

Earlier this month, New York City sent a letter to Scott Harris, the clerk of the Supreme Court, to inform the justices that a challenge to the city’s ban on transporting guns outside the city limits is moot – that is, no longer a live controversy. The Supreme Court did not accept the letter, perhaps… Read More

The battle over the Trump administration’s efforts to build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico continued to unfold today. Last week the federal government asked the Supreme Court to put on hold a district court’s order that prohibited the government from using $2.5 billion in Pentagon funds for construction of the wall. This… Read More

John Paul Stevens, who was appointed by President Gerald Ford but became a leader of the Supreme Court’s liberal wing by the time he retired in 2010, died today at a Florida hospital of complications following a stroke that he suffered yesterday. He was 99. In a statement released by the Supreme Court’s Public Information… Read More

The battle over the Trump administration’s efforts to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border came to the Supreme Court today, as the federal government asked the justices to block a lower-court order that barred the government from using $2.5 billion in Pentagon funds for construction of the wall.

This afternoon President Donald Trump announced that his administration will end its battle to include a question about citizenship on the 2020 census. The news came two weeks after the Supreme Court blocked the government from including the question, with the court’s four liberal justices joining Chief Justice John Roberts in ruling that the reason… Read More