Covering the Supreme Court, lower courts, and the law

Every major case that the Supreme Court decides has the potential to settle a lot about what the nation’s laws or its Constitution mean.  Much of the time, though, the Court prefers to decide such a case narrowly, leaving serious questions unanswered. Today’s unanimous decision by the Court on the Electoral College is narrow like… Read More

When six of the nine Supreme Court Justices together write 133 pages of opinions, divided into six different perspectives, in the course of deciding one case, it may be difficult to figure out just what the Court has done. With today’s new abortion decision, however, that is easy: the 16 pages written by Chief Justice… Read More

The Affordable Care Act, which had its tenth anniversary in March, has never been free of some doubt about how long it might last. Almost from the beginning, there were frequent predictions of a “death spiral” setting in, because the huge law with so many inter-locking parts supposedly would collapse on its own. And, from… Read More

After eight years in operation, and multiple legal tests in the courts, the federal government’s program that has kept nearly 700,000 undocumented immigrants from being deported still faces a deeply uncertain future. It is true that the program – Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) — was saved by Thursday’s 5-4 decision by the Supreme… Read More

As future historians look back at the Trump years, they likely will conclude that a dominant feature was a massive growth in presidential power, only imperfectly checked by the other branches of government.  And they could find a very good illustration of that in the story of Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn. That tangled political… Read More

If the Supreme Court’s “live” audio hearings this month have done nothing else, they have definitely revived the debate over the issue of the Court’s transparency – that is, its openness (or lack of openness) to public examination as it does its work. Having once allowed itself to be observed directly (even if only the… Read More

No matter how the U.S. Supreme Court rules on the current constitutional controversy over voting by electors in the Electoral College, members of that body will meet in their own states next December to cast crucial votes for the presidency.  The Court has not been asked to strike down the College. Only in a fairly… Read More

As the Supreme Court takes on more cases involving President Trump, it is becoming clearer that he is often benefiting from the Justices’ customary respect for the other two branches of government. Even as the Justices review further the legality of actions by the sitting President, the Court is predictably reluctant to inquire about motives… Read More

Over the next two weeks, the Supreme Court will be heard “live” doing its work for the first time in history, but the television audience will not actually see the Justices, their courtroom, or the lawyers appearing to present arguments.  This will be an audio presentation only, of six days of hearings, some involving highly… Read More

The long-running dispute over the constitutionality of the massive federal health insurance law – the Affordable Care Act, or “Obamacare” – headed into a new, and even more uncertain, phase on Wednesday after a federal appeals court issued a eagerly-awaited ruling.   Dividing 2-to-1, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit found unconstitutional a… Read More