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

One day before lawyers for a transgender teen who identifies as a boy and wants to use the boys’ bathroom at his Virginia high school are due to file their brief in the Supreme Court, the Trump administration today withdrew guidance, issued by the U.S. Department of Education in 2015 and 2016, on the use… Read More

When Stacy and Brent Fry obtained a goldendoodle for their five-year-old daughter, E.F., in 2009, they could not possibly have imagined that they would find themselves, seven years later, at the U.S. Supreme Court. But that is exactly where they were at the end of October, listening to the justices debate their case. The case… Read More

When a Texas jury was deciding whether to sentence Duane Buck to death for the 1995 murders of his former girlfriend and another man, the key question in their deliberations was whether Buck was likely to be violent in the future. Buck’s attorney put Dr. Walter Quijano, a psychologist, on the stand, where Quijano testified,… Read More

Last week the court released its calendar for the April sitting, the final two-week session in which the justices are scheduled to hear oral arguments during the 2016-2017 term. With a full calendar (and then some) for April, and three cases that were granted in January carried over to the fall, it was not altogether… Read More

At today’s oral argument in Hernández v. Mesa, the latest chapter in a Mexican family’s effort to hold a U.S. Border Patrol agent liable for the fatal shooting, on Mexican soil, of their 15-year-old son, some of the justices appeared “sympathetic,” as Justice Stephen Breyer put it, to the family’s plight. But at the same… Read More

Yesterday the Senate Judiciary Committee announced that the confirmation hearing for Judge Neil Gorsuch will begin on March 20, creating at least the possibility that, if confirmed, Gorsuch could join the court’s current eight justices in time for the April sitting, which begins on April 17. Today the justices released the calendar for the April… Read More

Judge Neil Gorsuch, President Donald Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court, was first contacted about a possible nomination to the court on December 2, 2016 – nearly two months before he was actually nominated. That information came over the weekend, when Gorsuch submitted his responses to a questionnaire from the Senate Judiciary Committee. Gorsuch’s initial… Read More

In any context, the case of Hernández v. Mesa would be an important one: The parents of Sergio Hernández, a Mexican teen shot by a U.S. Border Patrol agent while standing on Mexican soil, are seeking to sue the agent responsible for their son’s death in U.S. courts. But with the United States’ relationship with… Read More

Reports indicate that President Donald Trump intends to nominate Charles Cooper, a well-liked and well-respected Washington lawyer who served in the Reagan administration, to serve as the U.S. solicitor general. Cooper is perhaps best known for his defense of California’s Proposition 8, which barred same-sex marriage in that state. By a vote of 5-4, the… Read More

The Supreme Court released its calendar for its March sitting this morning. The calendar includes some high-profile cases – most notably, Gloucester County School Board v. G.G., the case of a transgender student who identifies as a boy and wants to be able to use the boys’ bathroom at his Virginia high school, which will… Read More