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Supreme Court



  • SCOTUS's Affirmative Action Decision Caps a Decades-Long Backlash

    by Jerome Karabel

    A scholar of university admissions says that the decision will be a "monumental setback for racial justice" that is rooted in myths about the policy that have surfaced through decades of opposition to affirmative action. 



  • Kagan, Sotomayor Join SCOTUS Cons in Sticking it to Unions

    By an 8-1 vote, with only Ketanji Brown Jackson in dissent, the Court allowed employers to bypass the National Labor Relations Board to seek potentially crippling tort judgments against unions for business losses related to strikes, removing a major incentive for good-faith negotiation by employers. 



  • New Evidence: Rehnquist Pretty Much OK with Plessy v. Ferguson

    by Richard Hasen and Dahlia Lithwick

    A 1952 memo that Rehnquist wrote defending "separate but equal" was raised during his Supreme Court confirmation hearings and dismissed as work-for-hire. It is now clear that he supported the narrow interpretation of the 14th Amendment that the current court majority hopes to use to undermine civil rights. 


  • The Modern Relics in Crow's Cabinet of Curiosities

    by Matthew Dennis

    Understanding Harlan Crow's collection, including Nazi memorabilia, as a set of relics (and not trophies or investments) helps to clarify the unease Americans feel about his understanding of power and cultivation of relationships with people of influence over the federal judiciary.



  • The Rise of the SCOTUS "Shadow Docket"

    An increasing amount of the court's consequential business is being conducted through emergency orders in response to lower court rulings, without public argument or signed opinions, argues legal scholar Steve Vladek. Although there are reasons for fast action in some cases, the court's public legitimacy is undermined.



  • After Dobbs, Abortion Politics are Straining the Republican Coalition

    by Daniel K. Williams

    When the party could focus on appointing anti-Roe judges, the Republicans could make abortion a political issue without having to decide matters of policy that inevitably leave parts of their coalition angry and disappointed. Have they lost by winning? 



  • LOC Opens Personal Papers of Justice John Paul Stevens to Public

    The justice's personal papers show, among other things, that Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy were upset that the harshness of dissenting opinion in Bush v. Gore would lead to public criticism of the conservative justices who helped George W. Bush to the White House.