Covering the Supreme Court, lower courts, and the law

It is becoming increasingly clear that, inside the Supreme Court, some of the Justices are growing worried about the institution’s public reputation. But what may be most worrisome to them is how that might translate into structural change, imposed on the Court from the outside. In recent days, three of the Court’s nine Justices have… Read More

Acting just before midnight last night, a deeply divided Supreme Court allowed Texas to continue enforcing the nation’s strictest ban on abortions – even as the majority insisted that it was not upholding the ban’s constitutionality. The majority said it had doubts that the Court had the power at this stage to stop the law,… Read More

The newly-circulating scheme to displace America’s voters in choosing the President next time, handing that over to state legislatures, has a good many interlocking parts. A failure of any one of them could doom the entire project. The theory does have many critics, and they strongly challenge what they consider to be its weak parts…. Read More

Yesterday’s article examined the theory that the Constitution might allow state legislatures to assign themselves the power to appoint the electors who will choose the President in 2024.  How might that actually happen? —————— It is only August, three years before America again chooses its President, but a scheme that might take away that choice… Read More

This discussion will appear here in two parts.  The second part will appear tomorrow. —————– Imagine that Americans go to the polls in 2024 and choose a Democrat for President.  Now, three years before that voting, a constitutional theory that has existed since the 1890’s is circulating anew, suggesting a way to overturn a Democrat’s… Read More

Modern America continues to wage heated culture wars — over abortion, same-sex marriage, religious liberty, systemic racism, voting rights. But, below the surface of those highly visible conflicts, there continues a quiet but deeply serious and very detailed culture war of another sort. The goal of those most actively involved in this campaign is to… Read More

Majority rule and the filibuster The Founders who wrote the Constitution believed strongly that, in governing America, the majority should rule.  But they did create a United States Senate in which members representing a minority of the nation’s people could thwart the will of the majority.  With each state, regardless of size, having equal seats… Read More

Relying upon a broad interpretation of the powers of the nation’s Chief Executive, President Biden on Friday fired one of the government’s most important officials even though Congress years ago had severely limited the authority to do exactly that.  Sent packing was the head of the Social Security agency, Trump appointee Andrew Saul, who otherwise… Read More

The federal government’s domestic terrorism watchdog – the Department of Homeland Security – is said to be monitoring extremist groups’ web and other electronic traffic to detect any signs of a violent attempt to put former President Donald Trump back in the White House.   A constitutional theory now being circulated by Trump himself, and by… Read More

For the third time in modern history, the Supreme Court has interpreted in a narrow way the strongest law that Congress has ever passed to protect voting rights – protection that was created especially for minority citizens.  In a 6-to-3 ruling on Thursday, the last day of the current term for decisions, the Court once… Read More