Covering the Supreme Court, lower courts, and the law

At 10:30 a.m. Tuesday (that’s London time; 5:30 a.m. on the U.S. East Coast), Britain’s highest court opens three days of televised hearings on Brexit in a historic constitutional test of the 700-year-old UK Parliament’s role as the most powerful entity in that country’s government. The fundamental issue at the core of 12 hours of… Read More

The nation’s best-known transgender student, Gavin Grimm, has won his discrimination case against his old high school – for the second time. The new victory came on Friday, four years after he first filed his lawsuit, three years after his first court victory, more than two years after the Supreme Court opted not to decide… Read More

Splitting 5-4, the Supreme Court on Friday evening cleared the way for the Trump Administration to issue contracts and start building about 100 miles of 30-foot-high walls, brightly lit, along the U.S.-Mexico.  It acted without ruling that the government had the legal authority to do so. In a one-paragraph order, the Court put on hold… Read More

No idea is more central to the entire history of America’s constitutional government than the belief that the people are capable of governing themselves.   And equally durable is the belief that the people govern themselves best through representatives that they choose at free elections.  To those representatives, the people give their consent to being governed…. Read More

With government lawyers, under pressure from President Trump, looking for a new way to justify asking everyone in America about their citizenship next year, federal judges in two cities moved rapidly on Friday to consider issuing new orders to stop that addition to 2020 census forms. The hectic pace of recent days over this constitutional… Read More

Resisting efforts by the Trump Administration to take full control of the continuing controversy over the 2020 census, a federal trial judge in Maryland on Friday moved forward on a faster-than-usual schedule to decide whether the plan to ask everyone in America about their citizenship was motivated by racial bias. Wasting no time after Administration… Read More

Overruling two of his Cabinet departments, President Trump demanded on Wednesday that everyone in America be asked about their citizenship as part of the 2020 census. Less than 24 hours after his Administration had declared that the controversy was over, with census forms going to the printers without that question, the President used a tweet… Read More

In a decision that seems sure to have a significant impact on American politics over the coming decade, the Trump Administration decided on Tuesday to carry out the 2020 census without asking everyone in the nation about their citizenship. The question, if asked, was likely to reduce the political power of larger states in future… Read More

In a stark new illustration of the seemingly never-ending troubles of the system of war crimes courts at Guantanamo Bay, a federal civilian court on Tuesday nullified nearly 500 orders that had been issued by a military judge there because of ethical lapses. The ruling by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals… Read More

The Pentagon on Tuesday afternoon gained clear and definite legal permission to impose significant new limitations on military service for transgender individuals, under a new policy that is set to formally begin in 17 days — on April 12.   With the legality of the new restrictions still not decisively settled in any federal court, the… Read More