The Obama administration, in a major surprise, on Thursday launched a nationwide plea for advice — technical, practical, legal and even religious — on ways to settle the bitter controversy over the Affordable Care Act’s birth-control mandate. This appeared to be a sign that private talks with religious groups over the issue have not reached… Read More
Jul 18 2016
U.S. wants Court to try again on immigration case
The Obama administration on Monday asked the Supreme Court to reopen the government’s case defending its broad new immigration policy, but to act on the request only after a ninth Justice has joined the Court.
May 16 2016
A compromise, with real impact, on birth control
This post also appears on scotusblog.com Without settling any legal issues surrounding the Affordable Care Act’s birth-control mandate, the Supreme Court on Monday nevertheless cleared the way for the government to promptly provide no-cost access to contraceptives for employees and students of non-profit religious hospitals, charities, and colleges, while barring any penalties on those institutions… Read More
Apr 14 2016
Has the Court brokered a working deal on birth-control?
This post also appears on Constitution Daily, the blog of the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. The Supreme Court is not normally involved in making deals, even deals that are aimed at helping the Justices decide a difficult legal dispute. But it may have just shown that it at least has the capacity to suggest a… Read More
Mar 2 2016
Two options on abortion law?
This analysis also appears on scotusblog.com It was unmistakably clear on Wednesday that the Supreme Court’s first close look at abortion rights in nine years will turn on the reaction of Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, and there were at least sturdy hints that he would lead the Court in one of two directions. In an intense argument in… Read More
Mar 1 2016
New look at abortion rights after nine years
This post has also appeared on scotusblog.com After nine years of having only a limited role in the always heated controversy over abortion rights, the Supreme Court is moving back into the center, facing again a fundamental question that has not changed much since Roe v. Wade: will women and their doctors have the basic choice about ending a… Read More
Nov 24 2015
January’s argument schedule
The Supreme Court on Tuesday released the schedule of oral arguments for the sitting that begins on Monday, January 11. The first case to be heard is one of the most significant of the Term: a test of whether non-union members in public jobs should be freed from paying any dues or fees to the… Read More
Oct 2 2015
Is Puerto Rico just a colony under Congress’s control?
A version of this post appeared Friday on Constitution Daily, the blog of the National Constitution Center, Philadelphia. ——————- From the time the Constitution was written, Congress has had clear authority to “make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States.” That is what Article IV says… Read More
Jun 22 2015
Is the New Deal in new trouble?
This post also appears on scotusblog.com One of the more durable legacies of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1930s was the idea that the farm economy can be bolstered by paying growers to keep some of their crop off the market, or paying them not to grow some of it at all. One of those programs… Read More
Jun 8 2015
Walking on a tightrope on Mideast policy
This post also appears on scotusblog.com Insisting that it was staying out of Mideast politics and that it was not shutting Congress out of foreign policymaking, a divided Supreme Court on Monday struck down a thirteen-year-old law allowing Americans born in the bitterly contested city of Jerusalem to claim that they were born in Israel. It… Read More
