Lyle Denniston

Feb 21 2022

New issues on Indian tribes’ rights

The Supreme Court, on holiday today, resumes public hearings tomorrow after a mid-term recess.  Tuesday’s hearings focus on the rights of Native Americans.  One case deals with tribes’ authority to operate gambling enterprises, the other is a test of constitutional protection of individual tribal members from being tried twice for the same criminal acts. The… Read More

Feb 18 2022

Voters barred from enforcing voting rights

Picking up on a hint from two conservative Supreme Court Justices, a federal judge in Arkansas ruled Thursday that individual voters and private groups promoting their rights cannot sue in federal court to enforce the last significant part remaining of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.  Only the U.S. Attorney General can do so, the judge… Read More

Feb 10 2022

A bold new claim of women’s equality

With the ongoing debate over putting a women’s equality guarantee into the U.S. Constitution now being renewed in all three branches of the national government, advocates now face months of uncertainty on what this year will bring.  Even so, they are seeking to stir up new interest in an issue that, for almost 99 years,… Read More

Feb 8 2022

Another major blow to minority voting rights?

By the slimmest of margins, the Supreme Court on Monday evening gave a hint, and it could be a strong one, that its conservative majority is prepared to consider eliminating any consideration of race in drawing up new election district maps for congressional seats. By a vote of 5-to-4, the Court allowed the state of… Read More

Jan 26 2022

The Breyer situation — so far

Without hard facts to go on, many Americans now have the impression that there will be a vacancy on the Supreme Court, and quite soon.  But nothing of consequence can happen on that until there is an explicit statement that it is definitely going to happen. The topic here, of course, is the widely reported… Read More

Jan 24 2022

An end to racial factors in college admissions?

About seven years ago, a lawsuit filed in federal court in Boston boldly called for “the outright prohibition of racial preferences in university admissions.”  A parallel case was filed the same day in North Carolina, seeking the same goal. A news story at the time noted that affirmative action in the selection of college entrants… Read More

Jan 22 2022

Roe v. Wade at 49 today

Forty-nine years ago today, a Texas woman using the name “Jane Roe” to protect her privacy won her case in the Supreme Court and access to abortion became a right protected by the Constitution.  In Texas today, and elsewhere, the Roe v. Wade anniversary finds that right to be in peril perhaps as never before… Read More

Jan 21 2022

Supreme Court: Upstaged by an “inferior court”?

Six weeks after giving abortion clinics a narrow chance to try to block the nation’s strictest abortion ban, the Supreme Court on Thursday refused to stand behind that ruling. Leaving undisturbed a lower court’s contrary decision, the Court’s majority did so in a somewhat embarrassing way: without a word of explanation. The new order, backed… Read More

Jan 20 2022

Why Trump lost in the Supreme Court — again

Seeming outwardly to have acted very narrowly, even modestly for an institution that lately has been acting quite boldly, the Supreme Court in fact made profoundly important constitutional history on Wednesday evening. It took the Court just a few days and, in the end, just 24 lines of judicial reasoning to cast aside the latest… Read More

Jan 19 2022

Race, cocaine and prison time

Later this morning, the Supreme Court will hold the last hearing on its January calendar, a case that brings up the long-standing question of racial bias in prison sentences for cocaine crimes.  It examines how federal judges may use their power to lower long prison terms in those cases. The Court broadcast of the “live”… Read More

Lyle Denniston continues to write about the U.S. Supreme Court, although he “retired” at the end of 2019 following more than six decades on that news beat. He was there for three revolutions – civil rights, women’s rights, and gay rights – and the start of a fourth, on transgender rights. His career of following the law began at the Otoe County Courthouse in his hometown, Nebraska City, Nebraska, in the fall of 1948. His online, eight-week, college-level course – “The Supreme Court and American Politics” – is available from the University of Baltimore Law School, and it is free.

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