A group of Hawaiians seeking to create a new tribal nation inside the state moved on Monday to head off a contempt order in the Supreme Court. They have done nothing to violate a Supreme Court order a month ago that blocked an election to select delegates to a convention to write a constitution, the group… Read More
Nov 20 2015
Test of immigration policy reaches the Court
Acting swiftly to try to get a Supreme Court decision by next summer, the Obama administration on Friday filed the opening papers in United States v. Texas — the epic battle over who controls U.S. immigration policy. The appeal was filed just eleven days after a federal appeals court had blocked enforcement of the policy, which… Read More
Jul 7 2015
Ban on contractors’ political donations upheld
Finding that the problem of corruption in government contracting is still a major civic scandal, a unanimous federal appeals court on Tuesday rejected a new constitutional challenge to the seventy-five-year-old ban on political contributions by individuals who are hired under contract to do work for federal agencies — an increasing way that federal agency tasks… Read More
Jun 30 2015
A new look at race and politics in redistricting
Twenty-four hours after giving constitutional backing for Arizona’s use of an independent commission to draw new election district maps for its members of Congress, the Supreme Court on Tuesday took on a case complaining that the same state agency wrongly used race and partisanship in crafting state legislative district boundaries.
Jun 23 2015
Pressing the ACA birth-control issue
This post also appears on scotusblog.com The federal government’s top Supreme Court advocate moved again on Tuesday to make sure that the Justices are keeping up with the government’s success in heading off a round of new challenges to the birth-control mandate in the Affordable Care Act. In the second letter of its kind, Solicitor General… Read More
Apr 14 2015
Preview on same-sex marriage — Part II, The states’ views
This post also appears on scotusblog.com This is the second post in a four-part series on the written arguments that have been filed in the same-sex marriage cases at the Supreme Court. This post covers the briefs of the four states in defense of their state bans. America’s state governments have never seen anything like… Read More
Mar 26 2015
Is the Supreme Court promoting race bias in election districting?
Reprinted from Constitution Daily, the blog of the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. This post is by Lyle Denniston. No one doubts that, at least since the 14th Amendment was put into the Constitution in 1868, states have been forbidden to discriminate on the basis of race in public policy. In modern times, however, America… Read More
Mar 4 2015
New US plea for speed on immigration dispute
The Justice Department told a federal judge in Texas on Wednesday that it may go to a higher court in an effort to put its new immigration policy into effect, if the judge does not act by Monday.
Feb 28 2015
Who, exactly, is “the legislature”?
A version of this post appears on scotusblog.com From time to time, at least since 1898, the people in America’s states have decided to take government into their own hands, withdrawing it from elected politicians when the voters think they have done the job badly, or not at all. “Direct democracy” has cycles of popularity,… Read More
Feb 25 2015
Argument analysis: Plucking simplicity out of complexity
This post also appears on scotusblog.com If it is true that lawyers can make a simple proposition into something bewilderingly complex, it may also be true that judges sometimes prefer the simple, and go with that instead. Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., proved the latter point in an argument on Wednesday, and the Supreme Court… Read More
