Covering the Supreme Court, lower courts, and the law

For the first time in the nation’s 233-year history, the Supreme Court on Friday erased a constitutional right.  Five of the Court’s conservative Justices joined to overrule Roe v. Wade and also a later ruling that reinforced that basic decision. What that means, and the Court majority said this was exactly what it intended, is… Read More

With much of the nation deeply worried over gun violence and with even a usually reluctant Congress ready to take some action, the Supreme Court by a 6-to-3 vote on Thursday created a new, broad and difficult-to-limit constitutional right to carry a concealed firearm in public. It took the Justices five opinions totaling 135 pages… Read More

Sharply narrowing the remaining constitutional separation between government and religion, the Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that public money grants cannot be denied to parents just because they will use it to pay for religious education of their children. The 6-to-3 decision, in a case from Maine, goes considerably further than the Court had ever gone… Read More

In a creative but – at best — long-shot attempt to get the Supreme Court to reopen its review of abortion rights, a women’s equality group in North Carolina argued Monday that those rights are already secured by the Equal Rights Amendment.  One key problem: ERA is not yet a part of the Constitution, although… Read More

This is the final of three articles in this series.  This part analyzes the potential that the constitutional right of privacy, in a variety of modern forms, may be at risk if the Supreme Court goes through with a draft decision to end the right to abortion. ********** A Supreme Court decision is something like… Read More

This is the second of three articles.  This part deals with the way the Supreme Court, according to a draft of an opinion, would implement a decision to end the constitutional right to abortion. ********** Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., has stirred up a wide array of questions about what his draft Supreme Court opinion… Read More

This is the first of three articles.  This part discusses the arguments made in the draft of a potential Supreme Court opinion that would overrule the Court’s two most important decisions on the right to abortion.  The draft was leaked to the public last week. *********** The Supreme Court is pulled in opposite directions when… Read More

If America had a “Founding Mother,” it surely was Abigail Adams, the wise and witty “best friend” to her husband John.  She is remembered for many things, but perhaps most often for a letter she wrote to John in March 1776, when he was serving in the Continental Congress, writing laws to govern colonial America…. Read More

Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., has ordered an investigation by Court staff of the source of last night’s leak of a draft opinion on the pending Mississippi abortion case. In doing so, the Court confirmed that the draft opinion was authentic, but cautioned that it is not final. It is not clear whether a… Read More

The last hearing of the Supreme Court’s current term will be held tomorrow, focusing on an attempt by the state of Oklahoma to overcome – at least partly – a devastating legal setback it had in the Court two years ago.  The state would have preferred that the Court use this new case to overrule… Read More