Earlier this month, the concept of cruel and unusual punishment briefly captured the country’s attention after the state of Tennessee on Sept. 30 tried and failed to execute Christa Pike. Pike, who was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer, survived being injected with two lethal doses […]

In Maxwell v. Dinis, to be argued on Nov. 2, the Supreme Court will address a federal inmate’s ability to use a habeas statute, 28 U.S.C. § 2241, to contest the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ refusal to accelerate his transfer to a halfway house or home confinement. By way of background, […]

In his new book, Justice Samuel Alito takes aim at what he calls judicial “insecurity,” or a judge’s self-conscious worry that he might be advancing his own policy preferences under the guise of impartial adjudication. “Twenty-first century originalists,” he argues, “should shed this insecure mindset.” Alito’s suggestion is at odds […]

Younge v. Fulton Judicial Circuit District Attorney’s Office, Georgia, to be argued on Nov. 2, involves an issue that will quicken the pulse of civil procedure aficionados. No less than four different rules of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure are in play: affirmative defenses under Rule 8, amending a […]

Tomorrow at 1 p.m. EDT, Amy will join Briefly’s Adam Stofsky on LinkedIn Live to discuss what unfolded at the court this month. Register here to attend the virtual event. At the Court On Tuesday, the Supreme Court denied a request from three cities and a group that provides legal […]

The Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to restore a Biden-era regulation that allows immigration judges to suspend some deportation proceedings. In a brief, unsigned order, the court turned down a request from three cities and a group that provides legal services to immigrants to pause an agreement between Texas and […]

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson – typically the court’s most frequent speaker at oral argument – began the term relatively quietly. In Suncor Energy v. Boulder County, the first argued case, she spoke the fourth-most among the participating justices, accounting for only 12.1% of the court’s words. But that relative silence […]

President Donald Trump and his policies were a consistent and high-profile theme during the Supreme Court’s last term. The justices weighed in on several of Trump’s signature initiatives, from sweeping global tariffs and his efforts to limit the availability of birthright citizenship to his attempts to fire members of the […]

The Supreme Court may soon see another clash between the original public meaning of the Constitution and President Donald Trump’s wishes. The birthright citizenship case, Trump v. Barbara, is one previous example of this. The next instance, which looms on the horizon, involves the issue of noncitizen voting. The Trump […]

While preparing this newsletter, the SCOTUStoday team comes across a wide variety of legal news. Still, some headlines stick with us, including this one: Convicted Australian Murderer Loses Bid to Eat Vegemite in Prison. At the Court On Oct. 21, the Trump administration returned to the Supreme Court’s interim docket, […]