Departments

;

Supreme Court

  • 5/28/2023

    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.

  • SOURCE: NPR
    5/22/2023

    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.

  • SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
    5/19/2023

    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? 

  • SOURCE: Associated Press
    5/2/2023

    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. 

  • SOURCE: New York Times
    2/15/2023

    Did Lewis Powell Sign a Slow Death Warrant for Affirmative Action?

    The Times court reporter Emily Bazelon dives into the decision by Justice Powell to decide the 1978 Bakke case through reference to "diversity" instead of racial justice, a rationale that stripped away much of the unjust history of higher education. 

  • SOURCE: Slate
    2/15/2023

    We Don't Need to Pretend Clarence Thomas Can Read the Founders' Minds

    by Heidi Li Feldman and Dahlia Lithwick

    The approach to "original intent" laid out in recent gun control rulings imagines the founders as capable only of the most cramped and limited understanding of the function of law in a society, argue a legal scholar and veteran court reporter. 

  • SOURCE: The Atlantic
    2/9/2023

    Originalism Will Kill Women

    by Madiba K. Dennie

    "Originalist ideology glorifies an era of blatant oppression along racial, gender, and class lines, transforming that era’s lowest shortcomings into our highest standards."

  • SOURCE: New York Times
    1/30/2023

    The Latest SCOTUS Case to Privilege Religion Over Civil Society

    by Linda Greenhouse

    Historically, the Supreme Court has viewed workplace accommodations for religious workers in terms of protecting minority faiths and relieving undue burdens on employers and coworkers. A pending case brought by a Christian postal worker promises to upend that balance. 

  • SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
    1/12/2023

    Hamline Controversy Shows How Religion and Neoliberal Administration Converge to Reject Expertise

    by Alexander Jabbari

    An instructive contrast can be drawn from a 1997 controversy over a frieze depicting Muhammad on the wall of the United States Supreme Court. Since then, post-9/11 Islamophobia, a culture of deliberate trolling under the banner of free speech, and the rise of corporate-style university management have drained the capacity for nuance.