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

No time to follow events at the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing for Judge Brett Kavanaugh, the president’s nominee to the Supreme Court? No problem — I have a brief (under two-and-a-half minutes) rundown on today’s events, in my new podcast.

The Supreme Court today declined to intervene in a dispute between the city of Philadelphia and Catholic Social Services over foster care and the Catholic Church’s position on same-sex marriage. Catholic Social Services had asked the justices to block an “intake freeze” on the new placements of foster children in the agency’s foster-care program while… Read More

Earlier this week the Senate Judiciary Committee released another batch of documents from (among other things) Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s stint in the White House counsel’s office. This post is not about those documents, because I just finished reviewing an earlier batch (totaling approximately 80,000 pages) of emails from Kavanaugh’s time in the White House.

In 1996, the Supreme Court ruled in Whren v. United States that police can stop and seize a motorist as long as they have probable cause to suspect a moving violation, even if the seizure is actually a pretext to search for evidence of other crimes. When the justices meet for their September 24 conference,… Read More

In 2012, in Miller v. Alabama, the Supreme Court ruled that a mandatory sentence of life without parole for juveniles convicted of murder violates the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Four years later, in Montgomery v. Louisiana, the justices explained that their decision in Miller did bar life without parole “for all… Read More

The Supreme Court released the argument calendar for its November sitting, which begins on Monday, October 29. During the six days of the November sitting, the justices will hear oral arguments in 12 cases, involving topics that range from the proper method of service for a foreign country to pre-emption by the Atomic Energy Act…. Read More

Although the battle over records related to Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s tenure in the George W. Bush White House continues, the Senate Judiciary Committee has recently released over 100,000 pages of documents. The first batch of documents, released last week, contained over 5,000 pages of emails from Kavanaugh’s stint as an associate White House counsel, a… Read More

When the justices meet for their September 24 conference, one of the cases that they will consider involves Planned Parenthood – but not, at least directly, abortion. Instead, the justices have been asked to weigh in on whether individuals can bring a lawsuit to enforce a provision of the Medicaid Act that allows Medicaid recipients… Read More

In Garvin v. New York, the justices have been asked to review two separate constitutional questions – one arising under the Fourth Amendment, the other under the Sixth – stemming from an arrest and conviction for a series of bank robberies.

In Sportswear, Inc. v. Savannah College of Art and Design, the justices have been asked to wade into a dispute over the scope of a federally registered service mark. The case arose after Sportwear, Inc., began to sell apparel bearing the words “Savannah College of Art and Design” and “SCAD.” In 2014, the college filed… Read More