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

The Supreme Court on Monday turned down a plea from Missouri to block New York from imposing a gag order and sentencing former President Donald Trump in his criminal proceedings there until after the 2024 elections. After a six-week trial, Trump was convicted in May in a New York state court on 34 counts of… Read More

President Joe Biden on Monday proposed three reforms to the Supreme Court. Stressing that he has “great respect for our institutions and the separation of powers,” but contending that “[w]hat is happening now is not normal,” Biden pointed to the court’s recent decision finding that former presidents have broad immunity for crimes that they commit… Read More

The Supreme Court on Friday afternoon appointed a former clerk to Justice Samuel Alito (who also served as a clerk to then-Judge Neil Gorsuch on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit) to defend a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in a pair of cases involving the… Read More

The Supreme Court will hear a challenge to the Biden administration’s efforts to regulate so-called “ghost guns” in the first week of the 2024-25 term in October, followed the next day by an unusual death-penalty case – in which the state’s attorney general supports the condemned man’s efforts to overturn his conviction and sentence. Garland… Read More

The Biden administration on Monday asked the Supreme Court to temporarily put on hold a portion of two orders issued by federal trial courts in Louisiana and Kentucky that prohibit the Department of Education from enforcing any part of an April 2024 rule implementing Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which bars sex… Read More

The Supreme Court blocked the execution of Ruben Gutierrez, who was sentenced to die after 7 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday for the 1998 stabbing death of 85-year-old Escolastica Harrison in Brownsville, Tex. In a brief unsigned order released to reporters just after 6:30 p.m. Eastern time on Tuesday night, the justices put Gutierrez’s execution on… Read More

Former President Donald Trump loomed large over the Supreme Court’s 2023-24 term. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee for 2024 brought two cases to the justices and fared well in both; Trump could also benefit from the decision in a third case, brought by a defendant charged in the Jan. 6 attacks on the U.S. Capitol…. Read More

The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that a North Dakota truck stop can bring a challenge to a regulation issued 13 years ago by the Federal Reserve Board. In a 6-3 vote divided along ideological lines, the justices significantly expanded plaintiffs’ ability to sue federal regulators, ruling that the statute of limitations to challenge an… Read More

The Supreme Court on Tuesday added five new cases – two of which will be argued together – to its docket for the 2024-25 term. The justices declined to take up a number of notable cases, including challenges to Illinois’s regulation of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines and a challenge to the power of federal… Read More

The Supreme Court on Monday sent a pair of challenges to laws in Texas and Florida that would regulate how large social media companies control content posted on their sites back to the lower courts for another look. In a decision by Justice Elena Kagan, the court explained that both lower courts had focused too… Read More