Marissa Zupancic is JURIST’s Washington DC Correspondent, a JURIST Senior Editor and a 3L at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. She’s stationed in Washington during her Semester in DC. Today I attended oral arguments at the US Supreme Court for Food and Drug Administration v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine. The case concerns whether the [...]
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Explainer: Unpacking SB 4, Texas's Controversial Border Security Legislation
In recent days, an unusual state border-security law has ricocheted back and forth between US federal courts, introducing novel questions of state and federal supremacy. Long disgruntled over the federal government’s perceived inadequate efforts to curb illegal immigration along its southern border, Texas enacted a state law that would enable it to take action in [...]
US Supreme Court allows Texas law criminalizing illegal entry from abroad to go into effect
The US Supreme Court on Tuesday lifted a stay that prohibited the enforcement of a Texas law that criminalizes illegal entry into the state from other countries, allowing the law to go into effect. While Justice Samuel Alito indefinitely extended the stay Monday afternoon, he found himself among the six justices voting to lift the stay [...]
The US Supreme Court struck down Colorado’s attempt to bar Donald Trump from appearing on its election ballot on Monday. In a unanimous per curiam decision, the court reversed a Supreme Court of Colorado decision that barred the former president from seeking election in the state due to an alleged violation of Section 3 of [...]
US Supreme Court hears oral arguments on Trump-era bump stock ban
The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday on the legality of a Bureau of Alchohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) rule that banned rapid-fire “bump stock.” The case is an appeal from the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which struck down the rule. Throughout all the arguments, the justices wrestled with [...]
Oral Arguments Underline Importance of Supreme Court’s Chevron Cases
Even especially attentive Supreme Court watchers might underestimate the importance of a pair of cases the Court subjected to three and a half hours of argument on January 17. In a term full of cases pitting gun rights against domestic violence victims, determining access to medical abortion, and injecting the justices into presidential election politics, [...]
Alabama executes Kenneth Smith by nitrogen gas after US Supreme Court rejects final appeal
Alabama inmate Kenneth Eugene Smith was executed Thursday night by nitrogen hypoxia after the US Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision, declined to intervene in the state’s second attempt to execute an inmate who had previously survived a botched lethal injection. The court’s three liberal justices expressed their willingness to hear Smith’s claims of cruel [...]
US Supreme Court allows federal agents to cut Texas border fencing
The US Supreme Court voted 5-4 on Monday to permit federal border patrol agents to cut the razor wire that Texas installed on the US-Mexico border. The Biden administration requested the decision to allow federal agents to access the border without facing tort claims from Texas. The urgency follows recent deaths at the border crossing [...]
US Supreme Court hears oral arguments in 2 cases seeking to limit executive agency powers
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Wednesday in two cases involving a requirement for herring fisheries to pay for the observers the government used to monitor overfishing. At the heart of the two cases was a debate over the court’s current deference to executive branch agencies in interpreting ambiguous language in federal laws. The [...]
Donald Trump and Capital Punishment: Sounding the Death Knell for American Democracy
During every execution in the United States, Death Penalty Action* holds a virtual vigil simultaneously with local death penalty abolitionists protesting outside the prisons and state capitals or governor’s mansions where the state-sponsored killing is taking place. When these gatherings are in person, those in attendance toll the same massive bell at the time the [...]