Covering the Supreme Court, lower courts, and the law

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

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

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

Tomorrow, the Supreme Court will examine the latest round in the decades-long constitutional controversy over federal limits on political campaign donations and spending.  Lurking in the case is a bold attempt by a prominent Republican politician to get the Court to wipe out what remains of a frequently challenged 2002 law that brought major reforms. … Read More

The Supreme Court, on holiday today, returns to the bench tomorrow for a hearing on a familiar topic: claims of government discrimination against religious groups.  In a second hearing Tuesday, it will be dealing with another recurring topic: who owns famous art objects seized by the Nazis during the Holocaust? “Live” audio (no video) of… Read More

Flexing its judicial muscle as the Supreme Court has not done in generations, the Court’s new conservative majority of six Justices on Thursday blocked the Biden Administration policy that sought to impose nationwide protection of more than 84 million workers from the deadly Covid-19 virus. The ruling was far broader than anything the conservative majority… Read More

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court turns once again to the age-old question of how government can – or should – make allowances for mistakes people make in fulfilling their legal duties.  The case being heard turns on when the federal government can relax a formal legal deadline.  Specifically, the case is about a tax deadline,… Read More

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court will once again attempt to find its way through the bewildering maze that is immigration law, with a new look at the lingering issue of the federal government’s power to keep non-citizens in detention while they await being deported.  The two cases to be heard tomorrow unfold against a broad… Read More

On Monday, the Supreme Court – back on its regular schedule — returns to the very complex task of trying to make sense of the widely varied and sometimes conflicting parts of the nation’s healthcare system. The task has always been harder because of America’s century-old fear of “socialized medicine.” That fear has led the… Read More

Tomorrow, the Supreme Court returns early from its holiday recess to confront a controversy that may well rank as one of the most important in modern constitutional history.  But it will be doing so by a peculiar and rushed procedure, one that it very seldom uses. In the two hours of scheduled hearings Friday morning,… Read More