Covering the Supreme Court, lower courts, and the law

Virginia Democrats made a plan to join in the nation’s spreading gerrymander war, with the two major political parties seeking to capture more seats in Congress’s closely-divided House of Representatives.  The Virginia skirmish in the war would result in a 10-to-1 Democratic advantage over the Republicans, a switch of four seats from the GOP. Enlisting… Read More

For almost seven years, Donald Trump has been repeatedly losing a deeply complex court battle with a New York woman who claims he sexually assaulted her years ago.  She has won two verdicts totaling more than $90 million, rising daily as interest is added because nothing has been paid yet. Now, with his private lawyers and with… Read More

Departing from its norm, the Supreme Court moved swiftly on Monday to let at least one Southern state redraw its congressional election map to give Republicans a chance to pick up an added seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.  The Court may soon do the same for other states. The Court last week put… Read More

Broadening a trend it started a generation ago, the Supreme Court on Wednesday took away much of the power remaining in Congress and lower federal courts to assure black and Latino voters of their chances of electing candidates to seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and state and local legislative bodies. Because the 6-to-3… Read More

Imagine, for a moment, that you are eight years old, and you are one of about 1,200 students who are in third grade in public school this year in, say, Beaumont, Texas. (Any school system in Texas will do for this.) Every time you and your young classmates go from one classroom to another, you… Read More

Official circles in Washington and legal academy circles are deep in an intense new debate about the legitimacy of the U.S. Supreme Court.  That is not a new topic, but it was prompted by the spectacular public disclosure, by The New York Times, of previously secret memos written by some of the Justices in a… Read More

Acting quickly, groups that seek to protect the nation’s documentary history from being destroyed have asked a federal judge to block the Trump Administration’s claim that the President owns and controls all White House records. A lawsuit by a historians’ group and a civic advocacy organization was filed Monday in federal court in Washington, D.C.,… Read More

After pondering the issue for more than three months, the Supreme Court on Monday appeared to have cleared the way for states to tax the income of members of Native American tribes living on reservations.  The Court’s action could affect those living on Indian enclaves in as many as 35 states. The Court acted in… Read More

A high-level legal adviser told President Trump last week that he no longer needs to obey a half-century-old federal law that requires him to protect and not destroy the official records of his time in the White House.  Under the Constitution, those records are under the complete control of the President and he can be… Read More

President Trump’s attempt to rewrite the Constitution as part of his mass deportation campaign faces an ultimate test tomorrow, in the U.S. Supreme Court.  The controversy, vigorously debated today, has roots more than four centuries ago in English legal history. The core issue is who is an American citizen, according to the Constitution?  That basic… Read More