Covering the Supreme Court, lower courts, and the law

Sometimes, it takes the Supreme Court a little while to get to the heart of a case being argued before it, but it does catch on more quickly if there are really talented lawyers taking turns at the lectern. That happened on Wednesday when the Court was led by three skilled advocates toward a firmer… Read More

The U.S. Senate and two of its key Republican leaders, relying on an array of constitutional claims, has told a federal judge that the courts must stay out of the political feud over the current vacancy on the Supreme Court.  In a brief filed Monday in a federal District Court in Washington, D.C., the legislative body… Read More

It wasn’t planned that way, but the Supreme Court spent a lively hour on Monday – Halloween – talking about costumes. And Justice Stephen G. Breyer showed up, so to speak, in the improbable guise of a fashion critic. That was how an argument about copyright law went, but there was no reliable way to… Read More

For much of the 108-year history of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, it had only one director – J. Edgar Hoover, who led the agency for a few days short of 48 years. He was as near to a truly independent official in the federal government’s Executive Branch as the Constitution allows. He had his… Read More

The Supreme Court on Friday afternoon stepped into the nationwide controversy over the rights of transgender people – in particular, high school students – but gave itself the option of ruling very narrowly. The Justices said they will consider the appeal of a county school board in Virginia, challenging a federal appeals court ruling that… Read More

A federal judge in Newark, N.J., on Thursday set an expedited schedule for action on the Democratic National Committee’s claims that the Republican National Committee is joining with the Donald Trump presidential campaign in an illegal effort to intimidate minority voters (see the post below). U.S. District Judge John Michael Vasquez (who has been on… Read More

Arguing that the Republican National Committee is collaborating with the Donald Trump presidential campaign in an alleged effort to intimidate minority voters, the Democratic National Committee on Wednesday asked a federal judge in New Jersey to hold the GOP in contempt of court. The main claim is that the GOP is violating a court order against… Read More

Three times in the Supreme Court’s current term, the Justices and their staffs have put together schedules for hearings, and three times they have intentionally chosen to bypass three of the cases waiting the longest to be argued. The likely reason: the Justices are inclined to think that those cases would only wind up in… Read More

A war crimes case of a kind that the Supreme Court has not seen in a decade is due to reach the Justices on November 1, and may soon be followed by a second.  One or both cases could pose significant challenges to the troubled system of war crimes courts run by the U.S. military at… Read More

Reacting to the federal government’s complaint that a nationwide ban on the policy of protecting transgender people’s rights goes much too far, a federal judge in Fort Worth, Texas, has ruled that his authority does stretch all across the country.  Since the government is in position to press its policy everywhere, the judge declared Tuesday,… Read More