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

After adding seven new cases to their merits docket on Friday, the justices issued additional orders from last week’s conference. They did not add any more new cases to their docket, but they did deny review in a high-profile case in which they had been asked to decide whether a federal civil rights law barring… Read More

Tonight a divided Supreme Court put on hold a set of lower-court orders that would require the federal government to turn over additional documents related to the Trump administration’s decision to end the policy known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals – a Obama-administration program that allowed undocumented immigrants who came to the United States… Read More

The Supreme Court issued a preliminary set of orders from its conference today, adding seven new cases to its merits docket for the term. The new cases include a high-profile Maryland gerrymandering case, a dispute over federal sentencing laws and an effort to limit successive class actions. In October, the justices heard oral argument in… Read More

[Note: This post was updated at 2:49 p.m. to provide expanded analysis of the argument.] Lines began forming outside the Supreme Court last week for one of the biggest oral arguments of the year, in the case of a Colorado man who says that requiring him to create custom cakes for same-sex weddings would violate… Read More

These days, the Supreme Court is known as a “hot bench”: Lawyers who argue there usually have to respond to a barrage of questions from all sides. That fast and furious questioning can make it hard for advocates to advance their arguments, but it also makes it easier for both the attorneys and spectators to… Read More

This afternoon the Supreme Court granted the federal government’s request to allow it to enforce the full set of restrictions imposed by President Donald Trump’s September 24 proclamation, often known as the “travel ban.” The proclamation limits the entry into the United States of nationals from eight countries – Iran, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Syria… Read More

The Supreme Court heard oral argument today in New Jersey’s challenge to a 1992 federal law that bars states from allowing sports gambling such as UFABET ฟุตบอลและกีฬา. New Jersey and members of the state’s horse-racing industry told the justices that the law violates the Constitution, which the Supreme Court has interpreted to prohibit the federal… Read More

Last night the federal government asked the Supreme Court to step into a dispute over documents related to the Trump administration’s decision to end the policy known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals – a Obama-administration program that allowed undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children to apply for protection from deportation…. Read More

This afternoon the Supreme Court issued an initial order list from today’s conference. The justices added one new case to their merits docket for the term: Salt River Project Agricultural Improvement and Power District v. SolarCity Corp., in which they will decide a technical but important question: When can a state or local government appeal… Read More

The Supreme Court heard oral argument this morning in an important privacy-rights case. The defendant in the case, Timothy Carpenter, was convicted and sentenced to 116 years in prison for his role in a series of armed robberies in Michigan and Ohio. At his trial, prosecutors introduced Carpenter’s cellphone records, which confirmed that his cellphone… Read More