Ian Millhiser

1 week ago | pilotonline.com | Ian Millhiser

Last month, President Donald Trump publicly split with the Federalist Society, the powerful conservative lawyers’ group that he relied on to select judges in his first term. Thanks in no small part to Trump, a majority of the Supreme Court justices are associated with the Federalist Society, as are dozens or even hundreds of other federal judges. But now, Trump apparently regrets his earlier partnership with the Society.

1 week ago | vox.com | Ian Millhiser

The Supreme Court handed down a unanimous opinion on Thursday that shuts down a lawsuit brought by the nation of Mexico against US gun companies. In Smith & Wesson v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos, Mexico sued seven American gun manufacturers, claiming that their products are often sold to gun traffickers who then provide these guns to Mexican drug cartels. The Mexican government claims that up to 90 percent of guns recovered at crime scenes in Mexico come from the United States.

1 week ago | vox.com | Ian Millhiser

In 2018, shortly before Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation shifted the Supreme Court drastically to the right, Democratic Justice Elena Kagan laid out her strategy to keep her Court from becoming too ideological or too partisan. The secret, she said, is to take “big questions and make them small.”Since then, Kagan and her Democratic colleagues have had mixed success persuading their colleagues to decide cases narrowly when they could hand right-wing litigants a sweeping victory.

1 week ago | vox.com | Ian Millhiser

On Thursday, the Supreme Court handed down a raft of mostly unanimous opinions, three of which reached a conservative outcome despite the fact that they were each written by Democratic justices. Sometimes, the law in a case is clear. Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services, authored by Biden-appointed Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, was the first of these three cases. It involved a clearly illegal “background circumstances” rule.

1 week ago | flipboard.com | Ian Millhiser

2 hours agoSupreme Court makes it easier to claim 'reverse discrimination' in employment, in a case from OhioWASHINGTON (AP) — A unanimous Supreme Court made it easier Thursday to bring lawsuits over so-called reverse discrimination, siding with an Ohio woman who claims she didn’t get a job and then was demoted because she is straight.