This week’s Supreme Court hearings finish with two cases on Wednesday, including one of the most controversial of the current term. That is a case about parents who want to send their children to religious schools, with their tuition paid by state government – a classic case testing the constitutional “wall” between church and state…. Read More

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court will hear a single case; a second case had been scheduled, but it has been settled and removed from the docket.  The hearing tomorrow will explore when a threat of possible crime can be prosecuted. The “live” audio (no video) of the hearing can be found at Quick Links on… Read More

This week, the Supreme Court will once again confront controversy, probably not as highly visible as last week’s abortion rights hearing. This new controversy, though, is on the right of religious people to have access to government benefits, part of a long-running dispute under the First Amendment’s religious freedom clauses. However, that won’t be before… Read More

Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., appears to be leaning – if today’s Supreme Court hearing on abortion rights provides a reliable hint – toward fashioning a ruling that does not take away totally a woman’s constitutional right to end her pregnancy but leaves it much narrowed. The key to such a decision would be… Read More

On Tuesday morning, the Supreme Court will explore how far civil rights laws go to protect disabled individuals – American’s “invisible minority” – from discrimination.  That will be the first of two hearings tomorrow.  The second hearing, involving Medicare rules for reimbursing hospitals for drug costs, was reviewed as part of a discussion here yesterday. … Read More

NOTE TO READERS: Much of the public’s interest in the Supreme Court this week will be focused on the historic hearing on Wednesday on abortion rights.  However, the Court will hear other cases earlier in the week. The discussion below looks at two of those cases, putting them in a broader context of how law… Read More

(NOTE TO READERS:  This is the final of three articles about the Mississippi abortion case set for a hearing in the Supreme Court on December 1.  This discussion is about the details of that case – the issues and how they developed.  In the prior two articles, the focus was first on the process of… Read More

(NOTE TO READERS:  This is the second of three articles seeking to set the stage for next week’s historic Supreme Court hearing on abortion rights.  The discussion here recounts how a “right of privacy” became a constitutional right to an abortion.  The third article in this series will appear in this space tomorrow; it will… Read More

NOTE TO READERS:  This is the first of three articles on the Supreme Court’s potentially momentous hearing next week on the future of abortion rights under Roe v. Wade.  This discussion focuses on when and how the Court decides whether to overrule a prior constitutional ruling.  The second article, to appear in this space tomorrow,… Read More

It almost certainly is a long shot, but another way to push for Puerto Rico statehood seemed to emerge as a potentiality in the Supreme Court yesterday.  It would require a bit of constitutional wizardry to make that real.  (But, isn’t that the way we got a personal right to a gun under the Second… Read More