SCOTUSblog

Could Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Clarence Thomas be the new Scalia/Ginsburg? At an April 3 lecture at Vanderbilt Law, Sotomayor mused that Thomas was the justice “with whom I probably disagree the most.” However, The Tennessean quoted Sotomayor as saying, “I can stand here and say that I just love the man as a person.” […]

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At AL.com, Kent Faulk reports that “Alabama on Thursday night executed 83-year-old Walter Leroy Moody for the 1989 pipe bombing death of a federal judge,” and that Moody “became the oldest inmate executed in the United States since the return of executions in the 1970s.” For The Washington Post, Mark Berman reports that “Moody unsuccessfully appealed […]

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In its conference of April 20, 2018, the court will consider petitions involving issues such as whether the Eighth Amendment requires an inmate to prove an adequate alternative method of execution when raising an as-applied challenge to the state’s proposed method of execution based on his rare and severe medical condition; whether the Supreme Court […]

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The petition of the days are: Apodaca v. Raemisch 17-1284 Issue: Whether clearly established Eighth Amendment law permits prison officials to permanently deprive a prisoner in solitary confinement of outdoor exercise without a security rationale. Lowe v. Raemisch 17-1289 Issue: Whether clearly established Eighth Amendment law permits prison officials to permanently deprive a prisoner in solitary confinement of […]

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On Wednesday, April 25, the justices will take the bench for the final oral argument scheduled for this term. Fittingly, the case on their docket that day is one of the biggest of the year: Trump v. Hawaii, the challenge to the latest iteration of President Donald Trump’s efforts to restrict travel to the United […]

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John Elwood reviews Monday’s relists. April is a tricky time. By this late in the year, my skin is usually burned – although since I graduated from law school, that most often results from me setting the monitor contrast wrong. But there’s a new reason for my pallor this year. Under the new calendar – […]

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The issue before the Supreme Court in Lagos v. United States is the interpretation of a restitution statute applied in tens of thousands of criminal sentencing hearings each year. The Mandatory Victim Restitution Act requires courts to impose restitution for victims of a large swath of enumerated federal crimes. Under the MVRA, found at 18 […]

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In yesterday’s oral argument in Washington v. United States, the Supreme Court debated the scope of tribal fishing rights under 19th century treaties between the United States and northwest Indian tribes. In particular, were the lower courts correct that hundreds of the state of Washington’s under-road culverts, which obstruct salmon passage to some extent, violate […]

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For the Tribune News Service (via Governing), Bob Egelko reports on Sessions v. Dimaya, in which the court ruled on Tuesday that a portion of the criminal-removal provision in the Immigration and Nationality Act is unconstitutionally vague. At Slate, Mark Joseph Stern observes that Dimaya “marked the first time Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg assigned a […]

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The petition of the day is: Henry Schein Inc. v. Archer and White Sales Inc. 17-1272 Issue: Whether the Federal Arbitration Act permits a court to decline to enforce an agreement delegating questions of arbitrability to an arbitrator if the court concludes the claim of arbitrability is “wholly groundless.”

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