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

[UPDATED: On September 18, U.S. solicitor general Noel Francisco sent a letter to the court withdrawing the government’s application. Francisco explained that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit had granted the stay that the government had requested, eliminating the need for the Supreme Court to act.]  The federal government today asked the… Read More

[UPDATE: Chief Justice John Roberts later referred the request by Crossroads Grassroots to the full court, which on September 18 denied the group’s application without comment or published dissent. The ruling means that the district court’s order invalidating the FEC’s regulation will go into effect, at least for now.] Last month a federal district court invalidated… Read More

Last week the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to succeed Justice Anthony Kennedy. After the hearing ended, senators submitted written questions – over 1200 in all – to Kavanaugh, who responded last night. The senators’ questions address everything from Kavanaugh’s reaction when he was approached at the… Read More

After four days of testimony (occasionally interrupted by protesters), the Senate Judiciary Committee wrapped up hearings on the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court. I cover today’s events, which focused on witness testimony for and against Kavanaugh, in this podcast.

The Senate Judiciary Committee today held a third day of hearings on the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to serve as a justice on the Supreme Court. Here’s my rundown, in less than three minutes.

Day 2 of the Kavanaugh hearings began at 9:30 am and ended after 10 pm, but I boil it down to the highlights in just under four minutes in this podcast. Enjoy!

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