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

This afternoon the justices issued orders from their private conference earlier in the day. In addition to the two partisan-gerrymandering cases set for argument in the March calendar session, the justices also granted review in four other new cases, involving issues ranging from “immoral” copyright marks to vagueness in a federal criminal law. In Iancu… Read More

Less than six months after sidestepping a ruling on partisan gerrymandering, the justices announced this afternoon that they will once again wade into the thorny issue of when (if ever) state officials violate the Constitution by drawing district lines to favor one political party at another’s expense, this time in cases from North Carolina and… Read More

UPDATE: On Sunday evening, Chief Justice John Roberts temporarily blocked the district court’s order requiring the foreign corporation to comply with the grand jury subpoena or pay penalties. In a brief order, the chief justice directed the government to respond by noon on December 31 and indicated that the district court’s order would remain on… Read More

The Supreme Court released the calendar for its February sitting today. The justices will hear eight hours of oral argument over five days, including in two of the highest-profile cases of the term so far, involving factfinding in the dispute over the decision to add a question about citizenship to the census and a challenge… Read More

Last week the federal government went to the Supreme Court, asking the justices to block a ruling by a federal judge that bars the Trump administration from denying asylum to immigrants who enter the United States illegally from Mexico. Today the justices turned down the government’s request, which means that the government will not be… Read More

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had two cancerous growths removed from her left lung today, the Supreme Court’s public information office announced. After the surgery, which was performed at New York’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center,there was no sign of any other growths in her lung, and Ginsburg is resting comfortably in her hospital room. The… Read More

Last week the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to block a ruling by a federal judge in San Francisco in a challenge to a new U.S. policy on asylum, announced last month as thousands of migrants moved from Central America towards the U.S. border. The rule would prohibit immigrants who enter the United States… Read More

Last month the Supreme Court announced that it would, for the second time, review a case from Virginia challenging the legislative districts drawn in 2011 for the state’s House of Delegates as the product of unconstitutional racial gerrymandering – the idea that legislators relied too much on race when drawing the maps. Today Virginia legislators… Read More

Last month the Trump administration asked the justices to allow it to bypass the courts of appeals and immediately take up three cases (here, here and here) challenging the government’s ban on service in the military by most transgender individuals. Today the administration was back at the Supreme Court, giving the government a back-up option:… Read More

Last month President Donald Trump blasted a ruling by a federal judge in San Francisco that blocked the government from enforcing a rule that would prohibit immigrants who enter the country illegally from requesting asylum. Trump criticized U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar, who issued the order, as an “Obama judge” and predicted that the government… Read More