The U.S. Supreme Court ruled along ideological lines Monday against two Arizona death row inmates who had argued that their lawyers did a poor job representing them in state court. The ruling will make it harder for certain inmates sentenced to death or long terms in prison who believe their lawyers failed them to bring challenges on those grounds.
U.S. Supreme Courts justices face a reckoning over the audacious leak of an early draft opinion that strikes down the constitutional right to abortion, an episode that has deepened suspicions that the high court, for all its decorum, is populated by politicians in robes.
When the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in a major abortion case from Mississippi in December, it was clear to observers that there was substantial support among the court’s conservative majority for overruling two landmark decisions that established and reaffirmed a woman’s right to an abortion. Even before arguments in the current case, however, the justices themselves have had a lot to say about abortion over the years — in opinions, votes, Senate confirmation testimony and elsewhere.
A coach who crosses himself before a game. A teacher who reads the Bible aloud before the bell rings. A coach who hosts an after-school Christian youth group in his home. U.S. Supreme Court justices discussed all those hypothetical scenarios Monday while hearing arguments about a former public high school football coach from Washington state who wanted to kneel and pray on the field after games.
The Supreme Court has upheld the differential treatment of residents of Puerto Rico, ruling that Congress was within its power to exclude them from a benefits program that’s available in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
Sandra Day O’Connor was nervous when she joined the Supreme Court in 1981 as the nation’s first female justice. Now, President Joe Biden is preparing to put another woman in the role of a historic first on the court.
The Supreme Court on Thursday buttressed a criminal defendant’s right to cross-examine prosecution witnesses, ruling in favor of a New York man who was convicted of killing a 2-year-old boy on Easter Sunday in 2006.
“Whom have I helped today?” That’s the question Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor tells kids she asks herself every night before she goes to sleep.
In the latest setback for abortion rights in Texas, the Supreme Court on Thursday refused to speed up the ongoing court case over the state’s ban on most abortions.
Two Supreme Court justices say a media report that they were at odds over the wearing of masks in court during the recent surge in coronavirus cases is false.
The Supreme Court heard arguments in which it was asked to overturn a nationwide right to abortion that has existed for nearly 50 years on Wednesday.
The Supreme Court’s conservative majority on Wednesday signaled it would uphold Mississippi’s 15-week ban on abortion and may go much further to overturn the nationwide right to abortion that has existed for nearly 50 years.
An Alabama man who avoided execution in February was put to death Thursday after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a request for a stay by his lawyers, who had argued the execution should be blocked on grounds that he had an intellectual disability.
Get tested. Wear a mask. Don’t get too close. Not your typical court orders, but that was the word from the Supreme Court to lawyers and reporters who returned to the high court this week for the first in-person arguments in more than a year and a half.
The Supreme Court is beginning a momentous new term with a return to familiar surroundings, the mahogany and marble courtroom that the justices abandoned more than 18 months ago because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Acknowledging the limits of her own influence on the law as a member of the Supreme Court’s liberal minority, Justice Sonia Sotomayor on Wednesday encouraged citizens to work to change laws they may disagree with, like a recent Texas law that limits access to abortions.
A deeply divided Supreme Court is allowing a Texas law that bans most abortions to remain in force, for now stripping most women of the right to an abortion in the nation’s second-largest state.
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled against an Alabama inmate whose lawyers argued that his trial counsel should have done more to try to show he is intellectually disabled and therefore he should be spared a death sentence.
The Supreme Court on Thursday ordered California to stop collecting the names and addresses of top donors to charities.
The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday that low-level crack cocaine offenders convicted more than a decade ago can’t take advantage of a 2018 federal law to seek reduced prison time.