The high-stakes presidential contest for votes in the key battleground state of Ohio reached the Supreme Court late Sunday night, with the state Democratic party seeking a ruling to put back into effect a Cleveland judge’s order banning voter intimidation or harassment of voters.   The judge’s order, issued Friday, was blocked earlier Sunday by the U.S. Court… Read More

Acting quickly to rule before election day, a federal trial judge in New Jersey rejected — for the time being at least — a broad claim by the Democratic National Committee that the Republican National Committee has teamed up with the Donald Trump presidential campaign to intimidate voters.  The GOP thus was spared from being held… Read More

With no noted dissents, the Supreme Court on Saturday morning acted to put back into effect an Arizona law passed earlier this year that makes it a crime, with a potentially heavy fine, for anyone to pick up and deliver another voter’s ballot to a polling place.  The law, applying to mail-in ballots that are popular among… Read More

Amid the ongoing talk about how the Supreme Court is faring with one vacancy, there might be a new wave of congeniality among the eight Justices, perhaps aimed at getting some things done that otherwise would not.  For the second time in recent weeks, a Justice cast a vote that otherwise might not have been… Read More

Sometimes, it takes the Supreme Court a little while to get to the heart of a case being argued before it, but it does catch on more quickly if there are really talented lawyers taking turns at the lectern. That happened on Wednesday when the Court was led by three skilled advocates toward a firmer… Read More

The U.S. Senate and two of its key Republican leaders, relying on an array of constitutional claims, has told a federal judge that the courts must stay out of the political feud over the current vacancy on the Supreme Court.  In a brief filed Monday in a federal District Court in Washington, D.C., the legislative body… Read More

It wasn’t planned that way, but the Supreme Court spent a lively hour on Monday – Halloween – talking about costumes. And Justice Stephen G. Breyer showed up, so to speak, in the improbable guise of a fashion critic. That was how an argument about copyright law went, but there was no reliable way to… Read More

For much of the 108-year history of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, it had only one director – J. Edgar Hoover, who led the agency for a few days short of 48 years. He was as near to a truly independent official in the federal government’s Executive Branch as the Constitution allows. He had his… Read More

The Supreme Court on Friday afternoon stepped into the nationwide controversy over the rights of transgender people – in particular, high school students – but gave itself the option of ruling very narrowly. The Justices said they will consider the appeal of a county school board in Virginia, challenging a federal appeals court ruling that… Read More

A federal judge in Newark, N.J., on Thursday set an expedited schedule for action on the Democratic National Committee’s claims that the Republican National Committee is joining with the Donald Trump presidential campaign in an illegal effort to intimidate minority voters (see the post below). U.S. District Judge John Michael Vasquez (who has been on… Read More