Covering the Supreme Court, lower courts, and the law

Not since 2000 has the Supreme Court been as centrally involved in a presidential election as it will be when it meets on Monday for a final decision day, closing a momentous nine-month term.  If the Court issues a ruling tomorrow on former President Donald Trump’s claim to total immunity to criminal prosecution, it will… Read More

In a sweeping and historic new claim to judicial supremacy within the national government, a divided Supreme Court on Friday ruled that the courts – not federal agencies – have the last word on those agencies’ powers. Just because an agency’s grant of authority from Congress is ambiguous or unclear, the Court’s conservative majority declared,… Read More

In a ruling raising new doubts about more than 300 guilty verdicts for rioters at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, and maybe aiding former President Donald Trump’s legal defense, the Supreme Court on Friday narrowed the reach of an important federal criminal law. In a 6-to-3 decision, with unusual lineups among the Justices,… Read More

Trying hard to convince the public that it did not make a constitutional mistake two years ago in broadly expanding Second Amendment rights, the Supreme Court or Friday did give federal and state governments a bit more power to stop gun violence. The Justice’s 8-to-1 ruling in the case of United States v. Rahimi, with… Read More

In a major setback for federal government efforts to stop mass shootings, a divided Supreme Court on Friday overturned a five-year-old ban on a gun device that enables the firing of hundreds of bullets in just minutes – the kind used in the nation’s deadliest incident of firearm violence. By a vote of 6-to-3, a… Read More

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