This article was adapted from an essay that first appeared in the essay collection America Unfinished: 250 Years of Law and Governance (MIT Press, 2026). *** We are on the cusp of some revolutionary new reproductive technologies. Yet the Supreme Court has been silent on how to think about what the […]

The Supreme Court’s collection of art and objects associated with the justices includes a top hat worn by Justice Felix Frankfurter. The hat was made by the same company that “later crafted the wide-brimmed hat worn by Indiana Jones in the 1981 film, Raiders of the Lost Ark,” according to […]

In a decision allowing the Trump administration to move forward with plans to end humanitarian immigration protection for hundreds of thousands of people living and working in the United States, the majority of justices on the Supreme Court concluded that top officials did not racially discriminate against Haitians. In doing […]

Lawyers for a group of 23 states and the District of Columbia on Monday afternoon urged the Supreme Court to leave in place an order by a federal court in Boston that barred the federal government from applying provisions of an executive order on mail-in voting to those states in […]

In United States v. Rahimi, the Supreme Court denied that the Second Amendment is “a law trapped in amber.” That metaphor has now exploded onto constitutional law, appearing in six Supreme Court cases this term and hundreds of lower court opinions. Somehow, an expression that traces back to 1970s liberals […]

This is my first article for SCOTUSblog, and I want to explain why I have chosen the header Born Free and Equal for my column. The phrase is derived from the Declaration of Independence, whose 250th anniversary we are celebrating this year. The heart of the Declaration of Independence, and […]

Stephen Breyer became an associate justice of the Supreme Court on this day in 1994. He retired at the end of the court’s 2021-22 term. At the Court Last week, the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on its emergency docket to clear the way for the implementation of President […]

During this 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, it may be worth recalling the document’s only identified audience. Rather than single out the American public, the Declaration instead stated that “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they [the United States] should declare the causes which […]

Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement from the Supreme Court took effect on this day in 2018, just over a month after he announced it. At the Court The Trump administration on Monday asked the Supreme Court on its emergency docket to clear the way for the full implementation of President Donald […]

With the justices now on summer recess, let’s take a minute to reflect on the term and its impact on the Second Amendment. As a reminder, the court heard two Second Amendment challenges this time around: United States v. Hemani and Wolford v. Lopez. These cases mark the first time […]