Covering the Supreme Court, lower courts, and the law

Amid nationwide debate over the authority of police to use their guns in enforcing the laws, the Supreme Court on Friday agreed to decide whether police may be sued if they take action that provokes someone to be violent, and then shoot that individual in response. That was one of five new cases that the… Read More

The Supreme Court has a long history of staying away from constitutional rulings unless they just can’t be avoided. It will even give a federal law an unusual interpretation, if that seems necessary to avoid striking it down as unconstitutional.  But what if a law has a high potential for violating the Constitution, but there… Read More

For 14 years, the Supreme Court has been puzzling over how to solve a basic constitutional puzzle over the death penalty: how to make sure that people who are intellectually disabled – but are not insane – are spared from execution.  For a time during a hearing on Tuesday, it appeared that, at this point,… Read More

A newly fashioned constitutional rule against partisan gerrymandering, emerging Monday in a federal court in Wisconsin, will be tested in the Supreme Court, state officials now plan.  The split decision by a three-judge federal trial court struck down a 2011 plan giving Republicans a distinct advantage to elect members of the 99-seat state Assembly. The majority… Read More

Arguing that the Senate “cannot ignore a nomination” to the Supreme Court, a New Mexico lawyer on Tuesday took to another level in the federal courts his one-man effort to force a vote on President Obama’s choice of Circuit Judge Merrick G. Garland to become a Justice. Steven S. Michel of Santa Fe, whose challenge to Senate… Read More

For the first time, the election of Donald Trump as President is having a direct impact on the federal government’s operations — specifically, on President Obama’s sweeping new orders aimed at delaying the deportation of upwards of four million undocumented immigrants. In a joint motion filed in a federal trial court in Texas Friday morning, lawyers for the… Read More

In a ruling likely to be a deep embarrassment for experienced lawyers, the Supreme Court on Thursday refused to decide a major dispute it had agreed to hear because the attorneys for the companies involved had switched their argument as the case moved toward a hearing. The combined cases of Visa v. Osborn and Visa… Read More

With time running out on President Obama’s nomination of Circuit Judge Merrick B. Garland to be a Supreme Court Justice, a federal trial judge in Washington, D.C., on Thursday threw out a New Mexico lawyer’s lawsuit seeking to force a vote in the Senate. U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras, in a five-page opinion, did not rule… Read More

The Supreme Court’s expressed hope that lawyers on both sides of the controversy over the birth-control mandate in the new federal health care law would come to an agreement is no nearer realization after six months. The two sides are facing a series of deadlines to file new reports in eight separate federal appeals courts… Read More

With conservative advocacy groups pressing the new Donald Trump administration to reverse national policy that up to now has strongly favored transgender rights, this newest campaign for legal equality may have to shift its focus – to the states but with some continued emphasis on court cases, especially in the lower federal courts. The Supreme… Read More