Covering the Supreme Court, lower courts, and the law

Accusing a Senate committee of attempting to “embarrass and harass” Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, a private lawyer told the panel Tuesday that it has no power to investigate the jurist and no power to impose an ethics code on the Court or the Justices. In a seven-page, highly detailed “confidential” letter that became public,… Read More

President Biden and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen notified a federal judge in Boston Monday that, at least for now, they will resist an attempt to get the courts to provide a temporary way out of the looming economic catastrophe if the nation hits the government’s debt limit. A federal employee labor union recently asked U.S…. Read More

“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery…”  Who wrote that?  A Google search tells us that it was Oscar Wilde.  But can we be sure?  Isn’t all creative expression – music, art, poetry, literature – borrowed or copied from someone else? That, strangely, is a fundamental cultural question that the Supreme Court tried to answer… Read More

If President Biden and the Republican House do not find a way in the next few weeks to avoid a global economic collapse over the national government’s debt, the courts might have a solution. In a new lawsuit filed last week in federal court in Boston, a group of private lawyers have put forth a… Read More

A series of new filings today in a historic Supreme Court case on voting rights put a hard question before the Justices: how eager are they to settle now, before the 2024 elections, a core constitutional issue about federal elections? Lawyers on all sides of the North Carolina congressional elections case, Moore v. Harper, on Thursday… Read More

The most important voting rights case now before the Supreme Court may be newly at risk of ending without a decision.  A recent decision by the North Carolina Supreme Court has raised the prospect that there may be nothing left for the Justices to decide. On Thursday, the Court told lawyers on all sides of… Read More

Just one year after the Supreme Court’s conservative majority rolled out a new constitutional way to narrow the power of federal government agencies, the Court voted on Monday to consider endorsing another. At issue in a new case that will be reviewed in the Court’s new term starting in October is whether the Justices will… Read More

North Carolina’s state Supreme Court, with two new Justices making the difference, ruled on Friday that courts in the state have no power to strike down partisan “gerrymanders” – the two-centuries-old practice of giving one political party an advantage in elections. While a major setback for Democrats in the state, the ruling has national significance… Read More

The Supreme Court on Wednesday closes its regular schedule of hearings for its current term with a single case.  The hearing in a consumer rights case involves government power to take private property as a method of collecting back taxes. The Court will broadcast “live” the audio (no video) of the hearing on its homepage,… Read More

A single hearing in the Supreme Court on Tuesday arises out of a long line of prior rulings, back as far as 1804 and the case of a schooner named the Charming Betsy and her famous role in the young United States’ efforts to stay neutral in a European war, between France and Britain.  Those… Read More