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

The Supreme Court issued four opinions in merits cases today, bringing the number of remaining decisions down to 10. Interestingly, all four of today’s decisions came from the court’s April sitting, which narrows the field of remaining authors (including for Trump v. Hawaii, the travel ban challenge) considerably.

On Monday, the Supreme Court announced that it would not decide whether the state legislative maps drawn in 2011 by Wisconsin’s Republican-controlled legislature are the product of partisan gerrymandering – the practice of drawing district lines to favor one party, at the other party’s expense – and therefore unconstitutional. Instead, the justices sent the Wisconsin… Read More

The justices are expected to take the bench on Thursday, June 21, to issue opinions in argued cases. There are 14 cases left for them to decide; this post briefly summarizes those cases (in the order in which they were argued). Carpenter v. United States (argued November 29, 2017): Timothy Carpenter was charged with being… Read More

This morning the Supreme Court issued orders from the justices’ private conference last week. The justices added five new cases to their merits docket for next term, and they called for the views of the U.S. solicitor general in a challenge to California’s ban on foie gras, but they did not act on Arlene’s Flowers… Read More

Last summer, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg called Gill v. Whitford, a partisan-gerrymandering challenge to the state legislative maps drawn by Wisconsin’s Republican-controlled legislature, one of the most important cases of the term. The court heard oral argument in the case in October; two months later, it agreed to take on Benisek v. Lamone, a partisan-gerrymandering… Read More

The Supreme Court issued six new rulings in argued cases this week: four on Monday, and two more yesterday. The new opinions mean that 19 cases now remain undecided, but they did not shed a lot of new light on who might be writing those outstanding opinions.

Yesterday the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts released the 2017 financial disclosure reports for the justices of the Supreme Court. The reports are relatively opaque – they indicate the value of investments only in a wide range, for example – and do not include the value of the real estate in which the justices… Read More

The Supreme Court today ruled that a U.S. court does not need to take at face value a foreign government’s word about how that country’s laws operate. Instead, the justices explained, although courts should “carefully consider” what a foreign government says about its own laws, they are not bound by those views; they can also… Read More

When Minnesota voters go to the polls in November, they’ll likely have more wardrobe options than the last time the state held an election. That’s because this morning the Supreme Court ruled that a state law prohibiting voters from wearing clothing or other apparel containing political messages to the polls violates the First Amendment. Minnesota… 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 merits docket for the next term. The justices’ failure to act on Arlene’s Flowers v. Washington, a closely watched case involving issues similar to Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission,… Read More