Covering the Supreme Court, lower courts, and the law

About seven years ago, a lawsuit filed in federal court in Boston boldly called for “the outright prohibition of racial preferences in university admissions.”  A parallel case was filed the same day in North Carolina, seeking the same goal. A news story at the time noted that affirmative action in the selection of college entrants… Read More

Forty-nine years ago today, a Texas woman using the name “Jane Roe” to protect her privacy won her case in the Supreme Court and access to abortion became a right protected by the Constitution.  In Texas today, and elsewhere, the Roe v. Wade anniversary finds that right to be in peril perhaps as never before… Read More

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