Since the nation’s founding, the federal government has tried a variety of ways to pay people who have been harmed by the actions of U.S. officials.  At times, the effort has led to scandal as demands on the Treasury multiplied. In some sense, though, this was a noble idea.  President Abraham Lincoln, for example, told… Read More

The Supreme Court, continuing to sort out voting rights, on Monday morning issued two brief new orders – with no explanation.  The near-silence deepened a constitutional mystery that has lingered for years: will the conservative majority allow the main federal voting rights law to remain, in a workable form? While the six conservative Justices who… Read More

The Democratic Party’s already fading hopes of regaining control of the U.S. House of Representatives this year dimmed further Friday.  The Supreme Court denied the Democrats any emergency help in Virginia, one of that party’s best places to pick up House seats. The Court acted without a word of explanation and without any Justice willing to be listed in support… Read More

After a major rewriting by the Supreme Court last month of the meaning of a historic federal voting rights law, significantly reducing the rights of minorities at the polls, the Court is scheduled to meet in private tomorrow (Thursday) to examine a sequel. If, as the three dissenting Justices have complained, the Court’s conservative six-Justice… Read More

In a move with broad political and legal meaning, state officials in Virginia took action Monday afternoon to draw the U.S. Supreme Court further into the intense national feud over redrawing congressional election maps. In a 24-page filing, the state asked the Justices to clear the way for officials to go ahead with plans to… Read More

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