Tuesday, by his choice, is the last day of Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s 30-year career on the Supreme Court.  If retirement means having time to relish the successes of a working life, Kennedy will have much to remember. The Justice leaves the bench after years of holding the single most influential vote, at least when… Read More

Just days before retiring, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy is facing a question that has been quite familiar in his 30-year career on the Supreme Court: is it time to recognize a new and fundamental constitutional right?  That is the ultimate issue as he ponders an Oregon case that is all about America’s environmental future. The… Read More

If Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh takes a seat on the Supreme Court sometime in coming months, with Senate approval accomplished, the challenge of casting a solid fifth conservative vote will be tested across a wide array of deeply divisive questions – ranging from abortion to gay rights to healthcare to immigration to President Trump’s personal… Read More

A federal judge in Texas has given the Trump Administration a chance to apply its victory last week in the Supreme Court against foreigners’ entry into the U.S. as a new reason to end the DACA program. DACA stands for Delayed Action for Childhood Arrivals. The Administration has been trying since last September to abolish… Read More

Ending an era, and almost certainly guaranteeing strong conservative control of the Supreme Court, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, 81, retired on Wednesday afternoon, hours after the tribunal had finished a momentous term.  His retirement takes effect at the end of the month, giving President Truman and the Republican-controlled Senate more than enough time to find… Read More

The political and human rights controversy over the Trump Administration policy of family separation as a form of immigration control is also now moving into a quieter venue – into court, as a constitutional fight.  Two new lawsuits have just been filed, seeking court orders to promptly reunite thousands of children with their parents. The… Read More

In a sweeping endorsement of presidential power over who may enter the United States and a huge political victory for President Trump, a deeply divided Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld his order barring most foreign travelers from five Mideast nations with mostly Muslim populations. “The admission and exclusion of foreign nationals is a fundamental sovereign… Read More

Choosing – for now – to go to the sidelines on two highly controversial constitutional issues, the Supreme Court on Monday turned aside cases that could have given lower courts some new guidance on the rights of married gay couples and on the validity of partisan gerrymandering. In brief orders, the Court sent the cases… Read More

The Trump Administration, frustrated that lower courts have blocked it from ending a six-year-old program protecting young undocumented immigrants from deportation and that the Supreme Court has so far not come to its aid, has now laid out a new plan that could put the issue back before the Justices in a matter of weeks. … Read More

For the first time, the Trump Administration moved on Thursday to challenge the constitutionality of the key section of the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) that required most Americans to buy health insurance or pay a financial penalty as part of their taxes.  The so-called individual insurance mandate is beyond Congress’s power, the new filing argued,… Read More