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

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

Over the years, the Supreme Court has sometimes struggled to explain when and why religious symbols are permitted in the public sphere and when they are not. Sometime early in 2019, the justices will hear oral argument in a dispute over the constitutionality of a cross that sits on a traffic median in the suburbs… Read More

Last week the justices added one new case to their merits docket for the term – a relatively obscure maritime-law case. Somewhat unexpectedly, they added another new case today that will almost certainly have a much higher profile, at least in the legal world: Kisor v. Wilkie, in which the Supreme Court will consider whether… Read More

This afternoon the justices issued an initial set of orders from their private conference today. They added just one new case, involving maritime law, to their merits docket for the term; they did not act on any of the higher-profile cases that they considered this morning, involving issues ranging from partisan gerrymandering to the death… Read More

When Terance Gamble was pulled over by police in Alabama three years ago for having a faulty headlight, he probably didn’t think that prosecutors would make a federal case out of it. And he certainly wouldn’t have imagined that his case would make national headlines – not so much for its own sake, but because… Read More

In the past few days, the federal government has filed a bevy of briefs expressing the views of the United States on issues ranging from the interpretation of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act to California’s ban on foie gras. The justices often pay close attention to the government’s recommendations; if they follow that practice here,… Read More

This morning the Supreme Court issued orders from the justices’ private conference last week. The justices did not add any new cases to their docket for the term, but they did ask the U.S. solicitor general to weigh in on a pair of cases involving the Clean Water Act – and in doing so took… Read More

The Supreme Court kicked off its December sitting last week, and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg returned to the bench after fracturing her ribs in a fall at her office. Hear more about last week at the court, including the oral arguments in a dispute over Apple’s sale of apps to iPhone users and the second… Read More