As Justice Samuel Alito has said, there are “some people who have nothing better to do than count Supreme Court laughs.” True enough: Last September, I did just that, tallying the number of “laughs” between the 2017-18 and the 2024-25 terms to crown “the funniest justice.” The winner: Justice Neil Gorsuch, […]

Telling the justices that it had been deprived of “an essential tool to remove certain aliens, including some of the worst criminal aliens,” the Trump administration came to the Supreme Court on Thursday afternoon. Specifically, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer asked the court to clear the way for the […]

When the justices return to meet in conference next week and take the bench on Oct. 5, the first day of the 2026-27 term, a major focus will be on what new cases the court will add to its docket for oral argument and decision. At the center of deciding […]

Over the summer, Judge Joshua Divine of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri issued an unusual (to put it mildly) “sentencing opinion.” The defendant in the case pleaded guilty to receiving child sexual abuse material (the allegations were that he had engaged in sexual acts with […]

[Newsletter ad — view on SCOTUSblog] Join us today at 1 p.m. EDT on LinkedIn Live for a discussion between Amy and Briefly’s Adam Stofsky about the upcoming term. At the Court Late on Tuesday, the dispute over congressional redistricting in Missouri returned to the Supreme Court’s interim docket, when opponents of the […]

Missouri and a group of candidates and voters seeking to implement a new congressional map enacted in 2025 urged the Supreme Court on Wednesday afternoon to leave in place a ruling by a federal appeals court that directs the state to use that map, which was intended to give Republicans […]

On Sept. 11, the Trump administration notified the Supreme Court that Genalo v. Black, an immigration case set to be argued in October, was now moot – that is, no longer a live controversy – and should be dismissed from the oral argument docket. However, U.S. Solicitor General D. John […]

Less than two weeks after the Supreme Court paused a ruling by a federal judge in Missouri that would have cleared the way for the state to use a new congressional map intended to give Republicans an additional seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in the November 2026 elections, […]

On Friday, Aug. 21, Chief Justice John Roberts issued an administrative, or temporary, stay, allowing construction to continue on the White House ballroom. The order put on hold a district court injunction that would have halted work by midnight, and it explained nothing, staying the injunction “pending further order.” Ten […]

In my inaugural entry for this column, I critiqued the Supreme Court’s reliance on an abstract conception of the “separation of powers.” Because the Constitution does not contain a “separation of powers” clause, but instead contains a collection of specific provisions that enforce the separation of powers in specific ways, […]