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

[This post updates my June 18 post to take into account the cases decided since then.] In the next week, the Supreme Court is expected to issue 16 more decisions in argued cases, on topics ranging from partisan gerrymandering to the decision to add a question about citizenship to the census. We have no way… Read More

Last week the challengers in the dispute over the decision to add a question about citizenship to the 2020 census asked the justices to put off their ruling because of new evidence in the case. Today the federal government responded, describing the challengers’ claim as “meritless” and urging the justices to deny the request. The… Read More

The Supreme Court added another argument to its calendar for the fall. In an unusual Thursday order, the justices announced that they would take up a group of cases involving the constitutionality of President Barack Obama’s appointments to the oversight board created to get Puerto Rico back on its financial feet. The cases will be… Read More

Editor’s Note: This post was updated at 1:40 p.m. For nearly a century, a 40-foot-tall cross has stood in what is now a traffic median in the suburbs outside Washington, D.C. Erected to honor 49 local soldiers killed in World War I, the cross’s presence on public land drew little attention until 2012, when a… Read More

[This post updates my June 7 post to take into account the cases decided since then.] Over the next 10 days or so, the Supreme Court is expected to issue 20 more decisions in argued cases, on topics ranging from the constitutionality of a World War I memorial in the form of a cross on… Read More

Just over a year ago, the justices issued a narrow ruling in the case of Jack Phillips, a Colorado baker and devout Christian who refused to create a custom cake for a same-sex couple’s wedding festivities. The Supreme Court’s decision for Phillips rested primarily on the rationale that the Colorado administrative agency that ruled against… Read More

The First Amendment bars the government from restricting freedom of speech, but it does not generally apply to private actors, like corporations. However, private actors can be held liable for violating the First Amendment when they are acting on behalf of the government or doing something that the government would normally do – a doctrine… Read More

The Constitution’s double jeopardy clause guarantees that no one shall “be twice put in jeopardy” “for the same offence.” Today the Supreme Court upheld a longstanding interpretation of that clause, known as the “separate sovereigns” doctrine. By a vote of 7-2, the justices rejected a challenge to the doctrine by an Alabama man who argued that… Read More

Last week Virginia held its primary election for the state’s House of Delegates. It used a new map, which had been drawn with the help of a court-appointed expert after a federal court threw out the old one. The lower court ruled that 11 districts were the product of unconstitutional racial gerrymandering – that is,… Read More

The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts released the justices’ annual financial disclosures for 2018 today. The forms do not provide a complete picture of the justices’ finances: They do not, for example, include the value of the justices’ homes, and the values of their stocks, investments and bank accounts are reported only in a… Read More