I’ve decided to create a index of court cases for the current term. You can find it here for now, but you will always see it at the top of the page between the ‘Blog’ and ‘About’ tabs. I plan on adding links to outside information as well as my own analysis of cases that [...]

While I tend to agree with the Court’s essential ruling in Smith v. Harris I think the way in which they got there is highly suspect. The Court ruled in this case on a summary judgement, which is to say the Court ruled in this case without a full trial in the lower courts. The [...]

It seems as though the Supreme Court has posted a video on their website here. As I am writing this, the link is not working but I will keep you up to date as this progresses. I have busy these last few days with school/exams/etc. so the blog has been moving along pretty slowly but [...]

Before I get into any more of the recent death penalty cases, let me clear up the Penry decision that seems to be central in all three of these cases. The state of Texas had created a system of questions or “special issues” (the court uses the latter term) for juries to answer that were [...]

We all know that Justices Scalia and Thomas have always written the best dissents and Justice Alito’s dissent in Smith is no exception. Even though Justice Alito avoided most of the classic traps of writing a dissenting opinion like excessively broad analysis and only barely touching on the issues that the majority addresses, he is [...]

I tried desperately yesterday to find something worth blogging about but my searches were all in vain. Today, however, the Court’s ruling in three death penalty cases is just asking to be blogged about. In Smith v. Texas, the Court, in an opinion written by the ever-swinging Justice Kennedy, held that Texas’s Court of Criminal [...]

In the last few weeks watchdog organizations have been slowly uncovering more and more alarming examples of our nation’s sense of patriotism being used to justify decided un-American activities. Blogs were bubbling over allegations from Walter Murphy that he was forced to talk to an airline employee the last time he flew. Quite a few [...]

Now that the dust has finally settled on the Court’s ruling in Gonzales v. Carhart, Feminists are understandably upset and conservative groups are cautiously elated. Not surprisingly, the vast majority of opinions from around the blogosphere have come down with decidedly partisan terms. Feministing got mad at ‘anti-choicers’ while RedState called out ‘advocates of infanticide.’ [...]

So….I had probably the best dream ever last night. The Supreme Court decided that it suddenly needed an added facet of transparency and in order to get the word out to the world, they decided to hire a blogger to simublog one of their conference sessions. As many of you may know, conference sessions are [...]

Over the last few decades, the Court has been granting review on fewer and fewer cases every year. In the 1929-1930 term, the Court saw 981 cases on its docket and ruled on 156 of them. In the 2002-2003 term, the Court ruled on 84 of the 9,406 cases that came before it. This year [...]