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

The justices aren’t back on the bench until tomorrow, but early Friday morning they cleared the way for an Alabama execution to proceed. I cover last week’s order and look ahead briefly at next week at the court in this week’s podcast.

Last week’s opinion in a Missouri inmate’s challenge to the state’s plan to execute him by lethal injection revealed deep divisions among the justices on capital punishment. Those rifts were on full display again early this morning, as the court’s conservative majority granted Alabama’s request to allow an execution in that state to go forward…. Read More

In March 2018, Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross announced that the 2020 census would ask whether each person being counted by the census is a U.S. citizen. Ross explained that the Department of Justice’s civil rights division wanted the data to better enforce federal voting rights laws, and he characterized the decision as routine: From… Read More

Today the Supreme Court rejected a claim by a death-row inmate that executing him by lethal injection would violate the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment because of the likelihood that he could wind up choking on his own blood. By a vote of 5-4, the court cleared the way for Russell Bucklew’s execution,… Read More

The Supreme Court issued orders this morning from the justices’ private conference last week. The justices added just one new case to their merits docket for next term: Kansas v. Glover, in which the court agreed to decide whether, for purposes of an investigative stop under the Fourth Amendment, it is reasonable for a police… Read More

Last month the Supreme Court cleared the way for Alabama to execute a Muslim inmate after denying the inmate’s request to have an imam at his side in the execution chamber, even though the prison would allow a Christian chaplain to be present in the chamber. But tonight the justices blocked the state of Texas… Read More

The Supreme Court heard oral argument this morning in a dispute over veterans’ benefits that could become one of the most significant cases of the term. Although the case arose when the Department of Veterans Affairs refused to give James Kisor, who served as a Marine during the Vietnam War, benefits for his post-traumatic-stress disorder… Read More

A lawsuit by victims of the bombing of the USS Cole received a setback today at the Supreme Court. The victims are trying to hold the government of Sudan responsible for providing support to the al Qaeda bombers who killed 17 sailors and injured 42 more in 2000, but the justices ruled that the plaintiffs… Read More

Today the Supreme Court heard oral argument in a pair of cases that could prove to be among the most consequential of the term. The cases involve allegations that state officials engaged in unconstitutional partisan gerrymandering – that is, they went too far in taking politics into account – when they drew election maps in… Read More

Yesterday Attorney General William Barr sent a summary of the report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller to Congress. Today, the Supreme Court released orders from the justices’ private conference last week and turned down a petition that asked the justices to review a ruling by a lower court holding an unnamed foreign corporation in contempt… Read More