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

With less than 24 hours before the justices are expected to issue their final decisions of the term, yet another filing in the dispute over the decision to add a question about citizenship to the 2020 census arrived at the Supreme Court. This one came from the challengers in the case, who urged the justices… Read More

Nearly 90 years ago, the 21st Amendment ended Prohibition and gave states broad power to regulate alcoholic beverages. Today, the Supreme Court ruled that the states’ power is not unlimited. By a vote of 7-2, the justices struck down a Tennessee law that requires anyone who wants a retail license to sell alcohol in the… Read More

A divided Supreme Court issued a major opinion on administrative law today. The justices declined to overrule a longstanding line of cases instructing courts to defer to an agency’s interpretation of its own regulation – a doctrine sometimes known as “Auer deference.” But in an opinion by Justice Elena Kagan, the court made clear that… Read More

The Supreme Court is expected to rule on the challenge to the Trump administration’s decision to include a question about citizenship on the 2020 census by the end of the week. But even as the justices presumably push to finalize their opinion in the case, new developments – both at the Supreme Court and elsewhere… Read More

The justices now have eight more opinions to release, on topics ranging from partisan gerrymandering and the constitutionality of Tennessee’s residency requirement for retail liquor licenses to the dispute over the Trump administration’s decision to include a question about citizenship on the 2020 census. Here are brief summaries of those eight cases, in the order… Read More

The Supreme Court is expected to rule any day now on the legality of the Trump administration’s decision to include a question about citizenship on the 2020 census. Despite that looming deadline, the wrangling over new evidence, some of which was discovered in the files of a Republican redistricting specialist, continued today, with lawyers for… Read More

[This post updates my earlier posts to account for the cases decided on Friday, June 21, and Monday, June 24.] The justices now have just eight cases left to decide this term, but we’re still waiting on what are likely to be some of the biggest cases of the term. We have no way of… Read More

This morning the Supreme Court issued orders from last week’s conference. The justices granted review in eight cases, for a total of five hours of argument, including in a trio of cases involving the federal government’s failure to fully reimburse health insurance companies for losses created as a result of the Affordable Care Act. The… Read More

Today the justices will take the bench to release more opinions. They are expected to issue 12 more opinions, on topics ranging from partisan gerrymandering and the constitutionality of a ban on scandalous or immoral trademarks to the dispute over the Trump administration’s decision to include a question about citizenship on the 2020 census. Here… Read More

In 2010, Curtis Flowers stood trial for the 1996 murders of four people in a Mississippi furniture store. The local district attorney, Doug Evans, who is white, struck five of the six potential black jurors in the jury pool, resulting in a jury with just one black member. Flowers was convicted and sentenced to death…. Read More