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

The Sixth Amendment’s confrontation clause gives defendants in criminal cases the right to “be confronted with the witnesses against” them. The Supreme Court on Monday morning declined to decide when a statement that is made out of court to an agency responsible for making bail recommendations is the kind of “testimonial” statement to which the… Read More

It was not clear at oral arguments on Monday how the Supreme Court will rule on a challenge to Louisiana’s latest redistricting plan. The state and a group of Black voters ask the justices to reinstate a congressional map, enacted by the Louisiana legislature last year, that created a second majority-Black district. A federal court… Read More

In 2022, the Louisiana legislature adopted a congressional map that included only one majority-Black district among the six allotted to the state, though a third of the state’s population is Black. The map was challenged in federal court as a dilution of the votes of Black residents and in 2024 the legislature drew another map,… Read More

The Supreme Court on Friday threw out a ruling by a federal appeals court in Chicago that upheld the conviction of Patrick Daley Thompson, who served four months in a federal prison for making false statements to bank regulators about loans that he took out but did not repay. In a unanimous opinion by Chief… Read More

The Supreme Court has tapped a former clerk to Justice Sonia Sotomayor to defend a lower court ruling in next term’s Barrett v. United States, a New York man’s challenge to his robbery convictions and sentences under two federal laws. The federal government, which prevailed in the lower court last May, has declined to defend… Read More

A divided Supreme Court declined to block the execution of Jessie Hoffman, who was put to death on Tuesday night in Louisiana. Four justices would have put Hoffman’s execution on hold – one short of the five needed for a stay. Hoffman was sentenced to death for the 1996 kidnapping, robbery, rape, and murder of… Read More

Chief Justice John Roberts criticized a call by President Donald Trump for the impeachment of a federal trial judge who temporarily barred the federal government from deporting noncitizens pursuant to an executive order published on Saturday. The rare public statement was the latest development in a fast-moving battle over Trump’s efforts to deport noncitizens alleged… Read More

The Trump administration on Thursday asked the Supreme Court to allow it to enforce an executive order signed by President Donald Trump ending birthright citizenship – the guarantee of citizenship to virtually anyone born in the United States. In a trio of near-identical filings by Acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris, the administration urged the justices… Read More

The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to weigh in on the constitutionality of Colorado’s ban on “conversion therapy” – that is, the effort to “convert” someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity. That announcement came as part of a list of orders released on Monday morning from the justices’ private conference last week. Less than a… Read More

The Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed a request by the Trump administration to lift an order by a federal judge that had instructed it to temporarily reinstate Hampton Dellinger as the head of the Office of Special Counsel. In a one-sentence order on Thursday afternoon, the justices threw out the plea as moot – that… Read More