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

This morning the Supreme Court issued additional orders from last week’s conference. On Friday, the justices announced that they would review Hawaii’s challenge to the most recent iteration of the president’s “travel ban.” Today the court granted review in an environmental-law case, Weyerhaeuser Co. v. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The star of Weyerhaeuser’s case… Read More

Almost 10 years ago, Theodore Wesby attended a party in the northeast section of Washington, D.C., that his own attorney would later describe as “raucous.” There were strippers offering lap dances, plenty of alcohol, people having sex upstairs, and (at least the smell of) marijuana. The celebration ended abruptly, however, when police received complaints about… Read More

In 2010, Andrew Cilek went to his local polling place in Hennepin County, Minnesota, to vote. Cilek was wearing a T-shirt that had three different images on it: the Tea Party logo, the message “Don’t Tread on Me,” and an image of the Gadsden flag, which dates back to the American Revolution but is often… Read More

The Supreme Court will hear oral argument on the challenge to President Donald Trump’s September 24 order, the latest version of what is often known as his “travel ban,” which limited travel from eight countries: Libya, Iran, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, North Korea, Venezuela and Chad. The announcement, which came in a brief order today, had… Read More

In June 2012, President Barack Obama signed a policy known as “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals” (popularly known as DACA), a program that allows undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children to apply for protection from deportation. Today the federal government went to the Supreme Court, asking it to intervene immediately in… Read More

Last week a three-judge federal court in North Carolina struck down the state’s federal congressional map, ruling that Republicans had drawn the map to give themselves an advantage over Democrats – specifically, the court stressed, to guarantee Republicans’ “domination of the state’s congressional delegation.” The court ordered the state legislature to come up with a… Read More

The Supreme Court heard oral argument today in the case of Robert McCoy, a Louisiana death-row inmate who says that he should get a new trial because his own lawyer told jurors that he was guilty – over McCoy’s express objection. After just over an hour of spirited debate, the justices seemed sympathetic to McCoy’s… Read More

The Supreme Court heard oral argument today in the case of several members of the armed forces, who were convicted by military courts-martial of offenses ranging from the relatively minor (wrongful use of a controlled substance) to the serious (sexual misconduct). They appealed to the military courts of criminal appeals (CCAs), where their convictions were… Read More

The Supreme Court issued additional orders this morning from last Friday’s conference. The justices added 12 new cases, for a total of 11 hours of argument, to their calendar for this term last week, but they did not add any new cases today. After announcing on Friday that they would review a pair of appeals… Read More

(Note: This post was updated to add additional discussion of today’s order list, beginning after the discussion of Animal Sciences Products.) With time running out to add new cases to its merits docket for this term (at least without expedited briefing schedules), the Supreme Court announced this afternoon that it would take on 12 new… Read More