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

This morning the Supreme Court added two new cases, consolidated for one hour of oral argument, to its docket for next term. Today’s grants mean that the justices will once again grapple with the Armed Career Criminal Act, which requires longer sentences for repeat offenders who commit crimes with guns and have been convicted of… Read More

When the Supreme Court convenes next week to hear oral argument in the challenge to President Donald Trump’s September 2017 proclamation – often referred to as the “travel ban” – restricting travel to the United States by citizens of eight countries, many of the reporters covering the hearing will be at the court for the… Read More

On Wednesday, April 25, the justices will take the bench for the final oral argument scheduled for this term. Fittingly, the case on their docket that day is one of the biggest of the year: Trump v. Hawaii, the challenge to the latest iteration of President Donald Trump’s efforts to restrict travel to the United… Read More

Since October, the Supreme Court has heard oral argument in two major redistricting battles, involving allegations of partisan gerrymandering in Wisconsin and Maryland. When the justices take the bench next Tuesday, they will hear oral argument in a third redistricting dispute, this time involving allegations that Texas lawmakers drew federal congressional and state legislative districts… Read More

In his 2015 book, “The Court and the World,” Justice Stephen Breyer discusses what he describes as the “new challenges imposed by an ever more interdependent world.” As the Supreme Court “is called upon to consider foreign realities,” he observes, it will face a variety of “institutional challenges” – including how to “obtain the information… Read More

In late February, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in a battle between the United States and the computer giant Microsoft. In 2013, the federal government had served a warrant on Microsoft at the company’s Washington state headquarters, seeking information about an email account that the government believed was being used for drug trafficking. Microsoft… Read More

This morning the Supreme Court issued orders from last week’s private conference. The justices did not add any new cases to their merits docket for their next term, which begins in October, but they did ask the U.S. solicitor general to weigh in on four cases. Two of the cases in which the U.S. solicitor… Read More

The Supreme Court added one new case to its merits docket for next term, bringing the total number of cases slated for oral argument in the fall to eight. The grant came in Stokeling v. United States, in which the justices will once again interpret a provision of the Armed Career Criminal Act, which imposes… Read More

The Supreme Court heard oral argument today in a challenge to Maryland’s 6th congressional district, which stretches north and west from the Washington, D.C., suburbs. For two decades, the predominantly Republican district was represented in Congress by Republican Roscoe Bartlett, but in 2011, redistricting altered the political composition of the 6th district; the following year,… Read More

With the cherry blossoms (sort of) getting ready to bloom, and the Supreme Court slated to issue opinions tomorrow, it’s time for another non-botanical pastime in Washington and beyond: Reading the tea leaves to try to predict which justices might be writing the remaining opinions on the court’s merits docket. Unfortunately, it’s too early to… Read More