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

During his campaign for the presidency, then-candidate Donald Trump announced that he would appoint justices to the Supreme Court who would overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 case establishing a woman’s right to terminate her pregnancy. Other presidents have made similar promises before, but they have not always come to pass. For example, in 1981 President Ronald Reagan… Read More

When President Donald Trump nominated him to succeed the retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy, Judge Brett Kavanaugh spoke movingly about the women in his life, beginning with his mother, a history teacher who became a prosecutor and later a state-court judge. He talked about his two school-aged daughters, whose basketball teams he coaches, and with whom… Read More

Tonight President Donald Trump is expected to announce his nominee to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy, whose retirement takes effect at the end of the month. Meanwhile, it was business as usual at the Supreme Court today, with the justices releasing the calendar for arguments in their October sitting, which begins on Monday, October 1. The… Read More

It has been nearly 25 years since Brett Kavanaugh arrived at the Supreme Court as a law clerk for Justice Anthony Kennedy. A few years later, Kavanaugh was back at the court as an advocate, arguing (unsuccessfully) that Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel for the Whitewater investigation, should have access to notes taken by a… Read More

James Ho may have been confirmed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit late last year, but today the Supreme Court ruled that a case that he filed before taking the bench, on behalf of a Kansas woman who alleged that police officers violated her civil rights when they tried to stop… Read More

Justice Anthony Kennedy announced today that he would retire from the Supreme Court, effective July 31. In a letter to President Donald Trump, Kennedy wrote that “it is the highest of honors to serve on this Court,” and he expressed his “profound gratitude for having had the privilege to seek in each case how best… Read More

[Editor’s Note: This post was updated with additional analysis at 1:55 p.m.] This morning the Supreme Court announced that government employees who are represented by a union but do not belong to that union cannot be required to pay a fee to cover the union’s costs to negotiate a contract that applies to all employees…. Read More

This morning the Supreme Court ruled in favor of crisis pregnancy centers – nonprofit groups that oppose abortion – in their challenge to a California law that was passed out of concern that the centers were holding themselves out as full-service reproductive health clinics and providing pregnant women with inaccurate or incomplete information about their… Read More

[Editor’s Note: This post was expanded with additional analysis at 2:04 p.m.] The Supreme Court today handed a major victory to the Trump administration. By a vote of 5-4, the justices rejected a challenge to President Donald Trump’s September 2017 order – often referred to as the “travel ban” – restricting immigration to the United… Read More

This morning the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Texas in a dispute alleging that the state’s lawmakers had drawn redistricting maps to discriminate against some of the state’s black and Hispanic residents. By a vote of 5-4, the justices threw out almost all of a ruling by a three-judge federal district court that would… Read More