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

In 2015, Justice Anthony Kennedy suggested that extended periods of solitary confinement might violate the Eighth Amendment’s bar on cruel and unusual punishment. Two years later, Justice Stephen Breyer dissented from the Supreme Court’s announcement that it would not block the execution of a Texas death-row inmate who had been held in solitary confinement for… Read More

When the justices meet for their “long” conference on September 24, one of the cases before them will be Multnomah County, Oregon v. Updike, in which they have been asked to weigh in on the level of discriminatory intent required to award compensatory damages under the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act.

When the justices return to the bench in October, one of the cases slated for oral argument during the first week of the term will involve property rights – specifically, whether a property owner must first run through his options in state court before he can bring a lawsuit in federal court alleging that the… Read More

Justice Anthony Kennedy is now officially a retired justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Among other things, this means that Kennedy no longer sits as the “circuit justice” for the 9th Circuit – a position in which he was responsible for both emergency requests (such as July’s request by the federal government for the Supreme… Read More

The Supreme Court declined to intervene today in a lawsuit filed by a group of 21 children and teenagers who allege that they have a constitutional right to a “climate system capable of sustaining human life.” The federal government had asked the justices to put discovery and a trial, currently scheduled for late October, on… Read More

Since Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his plans to retire, analysis of the potential effects of his retirement has mostly focused on areas of the law in which he provided the swing vote for a more liberal result – for example, abortion or gay rights. On those issues, Kennedy’s replacement with a more conservative justice could… Read More

Late last week Judge Brett Kavanaugh, President Donald Trump’s nominee to succeed the retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy, returned the questionnaire given to him by the Senate Judiciary Committee. Here are some of the interesting tidbits revealed in the questionnaire: Kavanaugh was able to parlay his time in law school and his three clerkships (two in… Read More

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