Covering the Supreme Court, lower courts, and the law

The abortion method that is most widely used and is the simplest – taking pills at home – survived a legal challenge in the Supreme Court Thursday.  The unanimous decision, however, did not settle the legality of that method, so other challenges could arise. This was the Court’s first ruling on abortion since its decision… Read More

The guilty verdict reached by 12 New York City jurors on Thursday in the trial of Donald Trump may have taught a vital lesson: the criminal law remains a useful tool for correcting the worst abuses in American politics. But that lesson will have a short life unless two old American institutions learn from it:… Read More

The deep cuts in drug prices that Congress ordered two years ago are surviving — so far — a massive constitutional challenge in the courts by major pharmaceutical companies.  This is the latest chapter in the long history, going back at least to the early 1900s, of big business rebelling against the rise of big… Read More

Ex-President Donald Trump is very likely to be put on trial for charges related to the January 2021 attack on the Capitol, but the most important questions are: when and how? That appeared to be the bottom line of the 2-hour, 40-minute hearing the Justices held Thursday in the historic case of Trump v. United… Read More

A dominant theme of Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign has been that the many criminal charges against him are only attempts to interfere with his election.  His strategy to overcome that has been to pursue an unprecedented claim: that he is constitutionally immune to all charges. That is both a political maneuver, portraying the charges… Read More

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court looks at a new and serious conflict arising out of the loss of the constitutional right to abortion.  The hearing will test whether a 38-year-old federal law can be used to block state laws that ban or strictly limit abortion – at least when a pregnant woman’s health becomes an… Read More

Anatole France, a celebrated man of letters, was a master of irony and satire.   One of his best-known lines: “In its majestic equality, the law forbids the rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread.”  That could be the introduction to a Supreme Court hearing on… Read More

Joseph Fischer, a political follower of Donald Trump, made two choices on January 6, 2021.  He had a constitutional right to make the first one.  The second one, however, may put him in prison.  On Tuesday, the Supreme Court takes up his case. This hearing will be historic for two reasons.  First, the Court will… Read More

Almost two years after ending a constitutional right to abortion, the Supreme Court returns to that intense controversy on Tuesday, exploring this question: will women still have full access to the most common method for safely ending a pregnancy – the “abortion pill”?   The Court will also examine the power of the courts to decide… Read More

For two centuries, America’s Native American tribes have had a legal right to rely upon the federal government for broad support, though they have often had to accept with that the insult of being thought of as savages.  The great Chief Justice John Marshall, who first gave the tribes significant legal protection in the 1820s… Read More