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

The Supreme Court should (and indeed must) stay out of the battle over Texas redistricting right now. That was the message in a 38-page filing submitted to the court today by the individuals and groups that had challenged the federal congressional redistricting maps adopted by the Texas legislature in 2013. Last month a three-judge federal… Read More

On September 25, the justices will meet for their first conference after their summer recess, which is also known as the “long” conference. At that conference, they will consider more petitions than they do at any time of the year (usually somewhere around 2,000) but will grant relatively few – last year, the number was… Read More

The Supreme Court today released the calendar for the November sitting, which actually begins on Monday, October 30. The calendar is a relatively light one: The justices will hear oral arguments in eight cases over six days, with six of those eight days featuring only one argument each – a departure from the court’s general… Read More

Justice Samuel Alito acted quickly this afternoon to grant a request by Texas officials to block a lower court’s order that had invalidated the state’s maps for the Texas House of Representatives, the lower house of the Texas legislature. Today’s order putting the lower court’s ruling on hold came shortly after state officials filed their… Read More

In a one-sentence order issued this afternoon, Justice Samuel Alito blocked an order by a federal district court in Texas that had invalidated two congressional districts in that state. Officials in Texas had asked the district court to put its order on hold to give it time to appeal to the Supreme Court, but the… Read More

In June, the Supreme Court agreed to review a ruling by a three-judge federal district court striking down the redistricting plan that Wisconsin’s Republican-controlled legislature adopted after the 2010 census. Today the state of Texas asked the Supreme Court to step into another redistricting dispute, this time a long-running battle over that state’s congressional redistricting… Read More

The Supreme Court is currently in its summer recess, and the justices are not scheduled to meet to review new cases until September 25, when their “long conference” – at which they will consider the approximately 2,000 petitions that have accumulated since the end of June – will take place. But in a relatively unusual… Read More

On September 25, the justices will meet for their first conference after their summer recess, which is also known as the “long” conference. At that conference, they will consider more petitions than they do at any time of the year (usually somewhere around 2,000) but will grant relatively few – last year, the number was… Read More

In just a little over a month, the justices will meet to consider the many petitions for review that have accumulated since the Supreme Court’s summer recess began at the end of June. This post is the first in a series that will take a closer look at some of the petitions that have been… Read More

Most Americans are familiar with some parts of the Bill of Rights, such as the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech and the Second Amendment’s protection of the right to bear arms. Other provisions, however, are less well known – for example, the 10th Amendment, which provides that the “powers not delegated to the United… Read More