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

The story of Mark Sveen and Kaye Melin is (at least according to Mark’s children, Ashley and Antone) a familiar one. After the couple married in 1997, Mark named Kaye as the primary beneficiary of his life-insurance policy. A decade later, they divorced, but Mark never changed the designation on his insurance. This meant that… Read More

This morning the Supreme Court issued orders from last week’s conference, adding two new cases to its merits docket for next term. Although neither case involves the kind of high-profile issue that is likely to make front-page news, both present significant legal questions that lawyers and law professors will certainly follow closely. With its announcement… Read More

When Andy Cilek went to his local polling place in Hennepin County, Minnesota, to vote, an election worker told him to cover or take off his T-shirt, which bore both the Tea Party logo and the message “Don’t Tread on Me.” Cilek, the worker said, would have to do the same for his “Please I.D…. Read More

Less than three weeks ago, the Supreme Court declined to get involved in a partisan-gerrymandering challenge to Pennsylvania’s federal congressional maps. Today that state’s Republican lawmakers returned to the Supreme Court, asking the justices to block what they characterized as the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s “intentional seizure of the redistricting process.” During their first trip to… Read More

  When the Supreme Court heard oral argument this morning in United States v. Microsoft, it found itself in what has become familiar terrain — trying to apply a decades-old law to modern technology. Today the justices were interpreting what Justice Anthony Kennedy characterized as a “difficult statute”: the Stored Communications Act, a 1986 law… Read More

The Supreme Court heard oral argument today in Janus v. American Federation of State, Municipal, and County Employees, a challenge by an Illinois child-support specialist to the fees that he is required to pay to the union that represents him, even though he does not belong to any union. Although this is the first trip… Read More

This morning the Supreme Court issued orders from last week’s conference. The justices granted review in three new cases today, but the bigger news concerned one particular case in which they declined to intervene – at least for now. Last month the federal government asked the Supreme Court to step into a dispute over whether… Read More

This morning the Supreme Court released its April argument calendar, which includes oral argument in Hawaii’s challenge to the travel restrictions imposed on nationals from eight countries in President Donald Trump’s September 24, 2017, order. A few hours later, a second set of challengers asked the justices to join their case with Hawaii’s and consider… Read More

The Supreme Court today released its oral argument calendar for April, the final sitting of the court’s October Term 2017. The justices will close out their regularly scheduled arguments on April 25 with Trump v. Hawaii, the challenge to the president’s September 24, 2017, order restricting travel to the United States by nationals of eight… Read More

The Supreme Court ruled today that U.S. victims of a 1997 terrorist attack in Jerusalem cannot rely on a provision of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act to seize a collection of Iranian antiquities held by the University of Chicago. The decision put an end to the latest efforts by the victims and their families to… Read More