The week in review

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Week in Review

The court heard four arguments this week, during the first half of the April sitting. Here are the links to SCOTUSblog’s coverage.

And on Wednesday, the court released its opinions in two cases: Enbridge Energy, LP v. Nessel and Hencely v. Fluor Corporation.

In Enbridge Energy, the court unanimously held that a federal district court did not have the discretion to excuse the late removal of a case from state court to federal court.
In Hencely, a 6-3 court – with Justices Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh and Chief Justice John Roberts in dissent – held that a state-law tort claim filed by Winston Hencely, who was injured during a suicide bombing carried out by an Afghan employee of a federal contractor, was not preempted by federal law.

At the Court

Today, the justices will meet in a private conference to discuss cases and vote on petitions for review. Orders from that conference are expected on Monday at 9:30 a.m. EDT.

Also on Monday, the justices will hear argument in Chatrie v. United States, on law enforcement’s use of geofence warrants, and Monsanto Company v. Durnell, on whether the federal law governing pesticide product labels supersedes state labeling requirements.

On Wednesday beginning at 9:30 a.m. EDT, we will be live blogging as the Supreme Court hears argument in Mullin v. Doe, on the Trump administration’s effort to end Syrians’ and Haitians’ participation in the Temporary Protected Status program.

Morning Reads

Most say Supreme Court avoids anti-Trump rulings: Survey

Ashleigh Fields, The Hill

A new survey from Marquette Law School showed that most respondents believe “the Supreme Court is going out of its way to avoid making a ruling that President Trump might refuse to obey,” according to The Hill. Fifty-seven percent of respondents overall held this view, including 79% of Democrats and 66% of independents. “Sixty-seven percent of Republicans disagreed.” The Hill noted that the poll also showed a partisan split in Supreme Court approval ratings. “Seventy percent of Republicans said they approve of the court, compared with 29 percent of independents and 19 percent of Democrats.”

New Marquette Law School Poll national survey finds partisan divides on most Supreme Court cases

Charles Franklin, Marquette University Law School

In its own coverage of its survey, Marquette University Law School highlighted additional partisan divides, including in responses to questions about cases that have been argued but not yet decided. For example, 46% of Republican respondents said the justices should rule that President Donald Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship is unconstitutional, compared to 91% of Democrats. And 75% of Republican respondents said the court should strike down “a Mississippi law that allows counting of late-arriving absentee ballots so long as they were postmarked by Election Day and arrive within five days of the election,” compared to 19% of Democrats.

11th Circuit shoots down challenge to machine gun ban

Alex Pickett, Courthouse News Service

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit declined on Tuesday “to overturn the conviction of a Florida man prosecuted for possessing a machine gun conversion device, ruling the longstanding ban on machine guns does not violate the Second Amendment,” according to Courthouse News Service. The 11th Circuit panel’s ruling was unanimous and “cit[ed] the landmark 2008 Supreme Court decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, which found a ban on the possession of handguns unconstitutional but allowed for the prohibition of ‘dangerous and unusual’ firearms ‘not typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes.’” “[M]achine guns are not protected by the Second Amendment as weapons in common use for lawful purposes,” Chief Judge of the 11th Circuit William Pryor wrote.

Tariff Refunds Are Coming. Just (Probably) Not for You.

Olivier Knox, U.S. News & World Report

Earlier this week, the federal government “launched a platform to process refund requests to comply with the Supreme Court ruling in late February that President Donald Trump’s signature tariffs were illegal.” But individual people are not eligible to make such requests, “because reimbursements are limited to ‘importers of record and authorized customs brokers’ – the people who paid the tariffs directly” to the government, according to U.S. News & World Report. “If a business passed that cost on to you in the form of a higher price, you may have paid for the tariff, but you did not pay it to the government.” Some companies, such as Costco, have promised to use tariff refunds to “lower prices,” but not to send customers “a direct cash payout.”

When Justices Stop Being Polite—And Start Getting Real

David Lat, Original Jurisdiction

In a post for his Substack, David Lat reflected on recent controversies involving the Supreme Court, including Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s “somewhat personal” and very public criticism of Justice Brett Kavanaugh during an appearance at the University of Kansas School of Law – a comment for which she has since apologized – and the leak to The New York Times of internal Supreme Court memos. The leaks, Lat wrote, “combined with the justices’ latest comments, paint a somewhat unflattering picture of the Court.” He suggested that the justices might be able to address this “optics problem” by repairing their personal relationships with one another.

On Site

Opinion Analysis

Justices reject certain protections for contractors in war zones

In Hencely v. Fluor Corporation, the court rejected the idea that military contractors have absolute immunity for negligent mistakes they make in an active war zone. “Perhaps the most surprising thing about the decision,” according to Ronald Mann, “is the split among the justices.” The majority opinion was written by Justice Clarence Thomas, and Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined a dissent by Justice Samuel Alito.

Opinion Analysis

Court holds that 30-day deadline for removing cases to federal court is mandatory

When a plaintiff files suit in state court – and a federal district court would have jurisdiction over the case had it been filed there – the defendant has 30 days in which to remove the case to federal court. On Wednesday, the court unanimously held that this 30-day deadline is mandatory, aside from the exceptions expressly set out in the statute addressing the deadline.

Argument Analysis

Justices debate rights of lawful permanent residents against backdrop of Trump’s immigration crackdown

During approximately 90 minutes of oral argument on Wednesday in Blanche v. Lau, the justices considered a challenge to how immigration officers classify lawful permanent residents who have been accused but not yet convicted of committing a crime that puts them at risk of being removed from the country.

Case Preview

Justices to hear dispute over cancer warnings on pesticide labels

On Monday, the court will hear argument in a case that thrusts the justices into a battle involving over 100,000 lawsuits, “billions and billions” of dollars, the international scientific community, federal and state policymakers, and, if you ask Monsanto, the very future of U.S. agriculture and innovation.

Relist Watch

Seven relists walk into a bar

In his Relist Watch column, John Elwood revisited seven cases that have recently been “trimmed … from the relist rolls,” including a religious freedom battle centered on Colorado’s universal preschool program that has been added to the 2026-27 oral argument docket. He also offered an overview of seven newly relisted cases, including a dispute between the NFL and one of its highest-profile Black coaches.

Podcasts

Advisory Opinions

Overturning Religious Precedent

Sarah Isgur and David French are live at the University of Denver answering questions on the case of a Catholic preschool challenging its exclusion from Colorado’s universal preschool program, the Supreme Court’s popularity, and whether Sen. Ted Cruz would make a great justice.

Amarica’s Constitution

Popes and Presidents

Akhil Amar and Andy Lipka reflect on the relationship between church and state – and popes and presidents – in a democracy and continue their discussion with Sarah Isgur on her new book, Last Branch Standing.

A Closer Look:

Chief Justice Warren Burger

Chief Justice Warren Burger may be most famous for helping to end Richard Nixon’s presidency. In 1974, he wrote the unanimous opinion in United States v. Nixon, requiring Nixon to surrender the White House tapes – roughly 3,700 hours of secret audio recordings captured in the Oval Office and four other locations between 1971 and 1973 – to prosecutors (rejecting Nixon’s claim of executive privilege). Nixon resigned 16 days later; as part of this release, he had been compelled to produce the “smoking gun” tape that revealed he had ordered the CIA to impede the FBI’s Watergate investigation. It was, as former Burger clerk John Sexton said, the chief’s “signature moment.” But Burger’s mark on the court went well beyond the Watergate tapes, even if he was not always particularly well-liked or respected by his fellow justices.

The 15th chief justice was born in 1907 in St. Paul, Minnesota to a working-class family. To get through night school at the University of Minnesota, Burger sold insurance. The future chief justice graduated magna cum laude in 1931 from St. Paul College of Law (today, Mitchell Hamline School of Law), joined a Saint Paul law firm, and threw himself into Minnesota Republican politics. His most consequential political act (at least up until that point) came at the 1952 GOP convention, where he helped deliver the state’s votes to Dwight Eisenhower. The following year, he was appointed by Ike as assistant attorney general and, in 1955, to a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Over a decade of conservative “law-and-order” judging later, Nixon nominated him on May 21, 1969, to replace the retiring Chief Justice Earl Warren. The Senate confirmed him 74-3. (It might be worth noting that yes, the new chief justice shared both a first and a middle name with his predecessor.)

Although Nixon may have expected Burger to serve as a “conservative constructionist,” the chief justice proved a bit more complicated. As some note, the Burger court did move the nation to the right (as compared to the Warren court) – but it also expanded protections for privacy, sex equality, and due process. Burger himself voted with the majority in Roe v. Wade in 1973 (indeed, three of Nixon’s four appointees joined the 7-2 ruling). The same year, Burger authored Miller v. California, which modified the court’s test for obscenity. The Burger court also issued a unanimous opinion supporting busing to desegregate schools, along with Lemon v. Kurtzman, which established a (subsequently much-criticized) test to determine if the establishment clause had been violated based on “excessive governmental entanglement with religion.” None of this improved Burger’s standing among his colleagues, who could find him “manipulative and aloof,” potentially miscounting his own conference votes to control opinion assignments. He has also been criticized for a lack of any discernible judicial philosophy.

Nevertheless, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor singled Burger out alongside William Howard Taft as one of the chief justices who “really deeply cared about judicial administration.” As Burger’s administrative assistant Mark Cannon recalled, “[t]he chief justice came to the court with lifelong desires to make everything work better. He was never content with the way things were if he thought there was a better way.” This led to some significant changes under his tenure – among other things, Burger discouraged justices from reading their full opinions or “lengthy summaries” aloud from the bench (estimating the practice wasted 300 hours of their time each year), cut the time allotted for oral arguments in half (from two hours to one), changed the physical bench to a U-shape (which reduced interruptions during oral argument), and began distributing written opinion summaries alongside decisions.

Burger retired in 1986, after 17 years on the court, to chair the Commission on the Bicentennial of the United States Constitution, which took up so much of his time that his wife reportedly asked whether he could simply get his old job back. He died on June 25, 1995, at 87, of heart failure, and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery. His professional papers are not yet available – with a release date of 2033. Per some scholars, the 1,200 cubic feet of papers could give us further insight into “Burger’s legacy and public reputation” and that of a court often “described as playing a transitional role between the liberal Warren Court and the conservative Rehnquist Court.”

SCOTUS Quote

“Legislation, both statutory and constitutional, is enacted, it is true, from an experience of evils, but its general language should not, therefore, be necessarily confined to the form that evil had theretofore taken. Time works changes, brings into existence new conditions and purposes. Therefore a principle, to be vital, must be capable of wider application than the mischief which gave it birth.”

— Justice Joseph McKenna in Weems v. United States (1910)