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On Monday, the court punted the recent religious challenge to the contraception regulations implementing the Affordable Care Act back to the lower courts probably because the justices were equally divided, and a similar result may well happen again with important abortion and immigration cases still to be decided this term. Although many court watchers are lamenting its deadlocked status, there are actually significant benefits to an equally divided court and few disadvantages.

On Monday, the court punted the recent religious challenge to the contraception regulations implementing the Affordable Care Act back to the lower courts probably because the justices were equally divided, and a similar result may well happen again with important abortion and immigration cases still to be decided this term. Although many court watchers are lamenting its deadlocked status, there are actually significant benefits to an equally divided court and few disadvantages.

he American people may find that they don’t need a single nine-member court to solve the country’s most disputed legal questions. If the justices are unable to reach a consensus, court of appeals judges around the country would have the final say on divisive issues.

Law enforcement accountability is missing in the justice system.

The Supreme Court could decide soon whether it will take a closer look at a legal doctrine it created nearly 40 years ago that critics say is shielding law enforcement and government officials from accountability. Defenders argue that it protects an officer's ability to make a snap decision during potentially dangerous situations.

"When the Supreme Court grants qualified immunity ... it sends a message to law enforcement that there are not consequences for violating the law and it sends the message to the people that their rights don't matter,"

The Supreme Court handed social media companies a win on Tuesday by blocking, for now, a Texas law that would have banned large apps including Facebook and Twitter from weeding out messages based on the views they expressed.

Do sites like Facebook have a First Amendment right to allow some material and not others, or an obligation to distribute almost anything?

The First Amendment restricts government censorship, but it doesn’t apply to decisions made by businesses.

"The stakes are clear," Clinton wrote of the slate of cases now pending before the court. "In a single term, conservative justices could undermine virtually every pillar of the progressive movement."

"Those who care about the fairness of elections, the future of unions, racial disparities in universities, the rights of women, or the future of our planet, should care about who appoints the next justices," Clinton wrote.

The current demographics of the Supreme Court are what make the coming election such a relevant issue.

Just what sort of emergency allows police to enter your home without a warrant? That was the question before the U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday.

Later that day, doctors concluded he was not a threat to himself or others and released him. In the meantime, police had confiscated his guns and ammunition. So he sued, alleging an illegal seizure and search of his home.

she isn't answering her phone, and her back door is open, so the neighbors call the police. "Would that be enough" for the police to enter the house without a warrant to check up on the missing neighbor?"No" answered Dvoretzky, "I think that alone would not be enough."

The coronavirus pandemic is forcing all courts to alter their procedures, but the US Supreme Court, imbued with an archaic, insular air and a majority of justices over age 65, will face a distinct challenge to keep operating and provide public access to proceedings.

The virus is bound to force Supreme Court justices into new territory. They may open their operations in more modern ways. Or, if they move in the opposite direction and shun any high-tech alternative, they might postpone all previously scheduled March and April oral argument sessions, a total 20 disputes, until next summer or fall.

This very practical dilemma comes as the justices already have one of the most substantively difficult slate of cases in years, testing abortion rights, anti-bias protections for LGBTQ workers, and the Trump administration's plan for deportation of certain undocumented immigrants who came to the US as children. (Those cases have already been argued, and the justices are drafting opinions to be released later this spring.)

I would like for the most influential swing voter on the Supreme Court to step away from his legal aerie, and wade through some of the muck that he and four fellow justices have given us with the 2014 campaign.

How did we lose our democracy? Slowly at first, and then all at once. This fall, voters are more disgusted, more bored and more cynical about the midterm elections than at any time in at least two decades.

beyond disdain for this singular crop of do-nothings, the revulsion is generated by a sense that average people have lost control of one of the last things that citizens should be able to control — the election itself.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court announced on Friday that it would decide whether human genes may be patented.

The patents were challenged by scientists and doctors who said that their research and ability to help patients had been frustrated.

ained the right to exclude the rest of the scientific community from examining the naturally occurring genes of every person in the United States,

The Supreme Court on Monday ruled against a Kansas man who argued his constitutional rights were violated when the state refused to allow him to bring an insanity defense.

Under the law in Kansas, a defendant can argue mental illness only to prove that he did not intend to commit the crime. Otherwise, mental illness cannot be used as a defense. Four other states have also abolished an insanity defense.

"Today's decision leaves much, if not most, of the scope of insanity defenses to individual states," said Steve Vladeck, CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at the University of Texas School of Law.

By 1935, the New Dealers had set up a new agency, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and cleaned out the FTC. Yet there was still immense concern that Roosevelt had not been able to tame Wall Street. The Supreme Court didn’t really ratify the SEC as a constitutional body until 1938, and nearly struck it down in 1935 when a conservative Supreme Court made it harder for the SEC to investigate cases.

It took a few years, but New Dealers finally implemented a workable set of securities rules, with the courts agreeing on basic definitions of what was a security. By the 1950s, SEC investigators could raise an eyebrow and change market behavior, and the amount of cheating in finance had dropped dramatically.

Institutional change, in other words, takes time.

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that companies cannot discriminate against job applicants or employees for religious reasons, even if an accommodation is not requested.

a victory for workers who want to exercise their religion on the job, from their wardrobe to transportation to time off

it could have major implications in the future for other job applicants and employees who seek time off for religious observances, as well as those who adhere to strict dress codes.

schools are increasingly faced with the question of whether they can discipline students for remarks made online about school or school officials.

In general, student speech in public schools has less protection than speech by adults in the community at large.

Tinker v. Des Moines School District decision

The Supreme Court of Canada ruled Thursday that evidence obtained through hypnosis should not be used in criminal cases because testimony based on such evidence is not "sufficiently reliable" in a court of law.

evidence obtained through hypnosis has been used byCanadian courtsfor nearly 30 years.

the technique of hypnosis and its impact on human memory are not understood well enough for post-hypnosis testimony to be sufficiently reliable in a court of law

It does three things—1) explains what motivated reasoning is; 2) explains how it’s threatening to the legal system (because motivated/biased interpretations of court findings and opinions by opposed groups of citizens threaten the very idea of court neutrality); and 3) takes a look at the Supreme Court’s 2010 term (and one bizarre Scalia dissent in particular) in this context.

There is thus an inherent risk that citizens will perceive decisions that threaten their group commitments to be a product of judicial bias. The outcomes might strike them as so patently inconsistent with the facts, or with controlling legal principles, that they are impelled to infer bad faith.

Kahan suggests it undermines the justice system if battling groups of advocates (say, the American Constitution Society and the Federalist Society) are constantly blasting court opinions from diametrically opposed perspectives, and using motivated reasoning to do so. At some point, as this continues, you wind up legitimating the claim that really, courts don’t know anything special or have any particular expertise—it’s all just opinion, and biased opinion at that. This precipitates a “neutrality crisis” over whether courts can really judge fairly.

A 4-4 split creates no precedent and resolves no legal issues.

Liberal justices would want the American people to see the effects of the unprecedented obstructionism that has kept the ninth seat vacant.

asked the Supreme Court to stay out of a controversial lawsuit the states of Nebraska and Oklahoma filed last year challenging the constitutionality of Colorado's legalization of marijuana.

"original and exclusive jurisdiction of all controversies between two or more States."

When Nebraska and Oklahoma sued last December and asked the Supreme Court to intervene, they argued that "Colorado’s affirmative authorization of the manufacture, possession, and distribution of marijuana presents a substantial obstacle to Congress’s objectives under

The U.S. Supreme Court refused Monday to consider a challenge to the men-only military draft.

women were not eligible for combat roles, a situation that has dramatically changed in modern times.

recommending that draft registration include both men and women between the ages of 18 and 26.

The Supreme Court justices met privately on Friday to discuss pending cases and presumably how they will handle the rest of a blockbuster term as the nation and the world self-quarantine in the midst of a pandemic.

At the regularly scheduled conference a "number of justices" participated remotely by phone according to Kathy Arberg, the Court's public information officer. That's because six of them are 65 or older. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer are in their 80s -- well within the government's standard for individuals at a higher risk.

The move to postpone is exceedingly rare, but there is precedent. In 1918, arguments were postponed in response to the Spanish flu epidemic. The calendar was shortened in 1793 and 1798 in response to yellow fever outbreaks.