Cecillia Wang, the national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, called her April 1 argument in Trump v. Barbara, the challenge to President Donald Trump’s executive order seeking to end the guarantee of U.S. citizenship to virtually everyone born in this country, the “most high-stakes and stressful task […]

Over the past year, I have written about the emergency docket, and each time the analysis has centered on substantive applications over such issues as whether agency heads can be fired or whether election maps stand. But don’t forget there are two other categories of emergency applications: death penalty applications […]

Thanks to all who joined us at our term-in-review event yesterday at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center in Washington, D.C., which was presented by the ACLU. Scroll to the Closer Look section below for a brief overview of the discussion. Plus, we’re now just one week away from the […]

We often describe the court through a familiar shorthand: three Republican-appointed conservatives (Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch) at the far right of the court; three Democratic-appointed liberals (Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson) on the other side; and a smaller group of three-Republican appointees […]

Please note that SCOTUS Outside Opinions constitute the views of outside contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of SCOTUSblog or its staff. Every day, Americans are witnessing the most significant expansion of presidential power in modern times. Just as important, and less obvious, is the other significant shift that is […]

Please note that SCOTUS Outside Opinions constitute the views of outside contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of SCOTUSblog or its staff. In a previous piece for SCOTUSblog, I suggested a somewhat unconventional way to gauge which are the most important Supreme Court cases: simply count the number of amicus […]

Today is our term-in-review event at Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center. The event, titled Executive Power and its Limits, will feature a fireside chat with the ACLU’s Cecillia Wang, who argued the birthright citizenship case before the Supreme Court; a discussion of the historical framework of birthright citizenship from Johns […]

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson may be starting a statutory-interpretation revolution. Jackson’s third full term was a doozy of separate opinions. Notably, a series of those opinions were written specifically to protest the majority’s refusal to consult legislative history in statutory cases – the first shots in a methodological battle along […]

Last week, the Supreme Court finished handing down its opinions in argued cases this term. In light of its decisions on birthright citizenship and the administrative state, one decision, from the prior week, may be somewhat easy to overlook. But I think this ruling is of great importance. This is […]

Forty-five years ago today, President Ronald Reagan announced that he would nominate Sandra Day O’Connor to the Supreme Court. He formally nominated her the next month, and she was confirmed in September 1981. O’Connor was the first female justice. Plus, remember to mark your calendars for Thursday, July 16, when […]