Covering the Supreme Court, lower courts, and the law

In the hours after Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died Thursday evening from her latest bout with cancer, it became clear that politics over the Court’s future will not be suspended, even briefly, for the nation to mourn the loss of perhaps the most consequential woman in America’s history. The Republican leader of the… Read More

After a sweeping 18-month investigation, New York State asked a state court on Thursday to  dissolve the National Rifle Association and distribute its assets to charity.  State Attorney General Letitia James’ lawsuit accused four present or former leaders of the nation’s leading gun rights organization of decades of funneling “millions into their own pockets.” It… Read More

A federal trial judge in New York City, assigned to rule on President Trump’s power to block the counting of undocumented immigrants in dividing up House of Representatives seats next year, moved on Tuesday to speed up his handling of the case. In a three-page order, issued one day after the case landed on his… Read More

President Trump, apparently contradicting two specific mandates in the Constitution, today banned the counting of undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. when seats in the House of Representatives are divided up next year, following the 2020 census. In an executive order that civil rights groups immediately vowed to challenge in court, Trump claimed that it… Read More

The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a request by House of Representatives committees to put into effect immediately the Court’s new ruling allowing the panels to demand access to President Trump’s private financial records. The effect will be to slow down by about two weeks the committees’ move to start a process in a lower… Read More

President Trump’s lawyers, opposing the effort by House of Representatives committees to move ahead rapidly to get his financial records, have urged the Supreme Court to let that controversy go over to the new Congress that will not meet until January 3.  If a delay lasts that long, the subpoenas issued by the committees would… Read More

Looming over the election that occurs in 113 days is a refrain that is sure to be heard repeatedly from the White House, before and after the balloting: “The election was rigged!”  That may not be true of how the contest actually went, but it is bound to add to the uncertainty that already is… Read More

A troubled presidency, America knows from Richard Nixon’s sad demise, can collapse in a hurry, especially if the Supreme Court is unwilling to bend the rules to rescue such a regime.  From a ruling against him by the Court on July 24, 1974, a mere 15 days passed before Nixon resigned under a threat of… Read More

For centuries, religion has made the human condition not only more tolerable, but also more serene, comforted and spiritually uplifting.  But, over those same centuries, some acting in the name of religion have caused war and strife and contributed to actual worsening of the human experience. In America, religion has long been at the center… Read More

Every major case that the Supreme Court decides has the potential to settle a lot about what the nation’s laws or its Constitution mean.  Much of the time, though, the Court prefers to decide such a case narrowly, leaving serious questions unanswered. Today’s unanimous decision by the Court on the Electoral College is narrow like… Read More