Jay Willis

Seattle

I cover judges, laws, democracy, and the 3 raccoons who live in a tree behind my house. EIC @ballsstrikes, occasional writing elsewhere. signal: jaywillis.52

Articles

The Supreme Court Knows Trump Won’t Bring Back Kilmar Abrego Garcia

1 week ago | ballsandstrikes.org | Jay Willis

Last week, the Supreme Court issued an unsigned opinion requiring the Trump administration to “facilitate” the return of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old Maryland man whom immigration officials deported to a Salvadoran megaprison 32 days ago.
If the Trump Administration Can Disappear Kilmar Abrego Garcia, It Can Disappear Anyone

2 weeks ago | ballsandstrikes.org | Jay Willis

Sometime in the next week, the U.S. Supreme Court will decide a distressingly open legal question: whether Constitution allows the government to disappear you off the street and ship you to a foreign torture prison, and robs federal judges of the power to do anything about it. The case is about Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old Salvadoran man who has been living in the United States since 2011.
Republicans Are Getting Awfully Close to Stealing a North Carolina Supreme Court Seat

2 weeks ago | ballsandstrikes.org | Jay Willis

On Friday, two Republican judges on a North Carolina appeals court nullified thousands of votes in the state’s recent supreme court election—a transparent ploy to overturn fellow Republican appeals court judge Jefferson Griffin’s loss to Justice Allison Riggs, a Democrat who has served on the state’s highest court since 2023. Griffin learned in mid-November 2024 that he came up 734 votes short in his contest against Riggs. Two recounts confirmed his loss.
Normal People Do Not Like What the Conservative Legal Movement Is Peddling

3 weeks ago | ballsandstrikes.org | Jay Willis

On Tuesday, Susan Crawford won the race for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, handily defeating her Republican-backed, Elon Musk-boosted opponent, Brad Schimel. For all the anticipation surrounding a hotly contested election in a state that President Donald Trump won by less than 1 point in 2024, the early returns were sufficiently one-sided that Schimel called Crawford to concede shortly after polls closed for the night.
John Roberts, the Supreme Court’s Fearless Defender of Democracy

3 weeks ago | ballsandstrikes.org | Jay Willis

Jay is the Editor-in-Chief of Balls & Strikes. Previously, he was a staff writer at GQ and a senior contributor to The Appeal. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Slate, Defector, and Fast Company, among others. More by this Author
BigLaw Is Always a Business First

4 weeks ago | ballsandstrikes.org | Jay Willis

Earlier this month, the Trump administration announced a sweeping executive order targeting the law firm of Paul Weiss, which, the White House says, has “played an outsized role…in the destruction of bedrock American principles.” The order directed agency heads to terminate any contracts with “entities that disclose doing business with Paul Weiss,” thus subjecting the firm’s clients to the threat of forevermore losing the government’s business unless they decided to hire different lawyers...
How Anthony Kennedy Became Just Another Trump Justice

1 month ago | ballsandstrikes.org | Jay Willis

If you are a Supreme Court justice attending a State of the Union address, the rules of engagement are pretty simple: Your job, no matter what the president says or does, is to sit quietly and maintain a poker face until the evening is finally, mercifully over. You do not clap for anything more controversial than “God bless America.” You do not stand up from your chair unless the fire alarm is going off and you can actually see flames licking at the ceiling.
John Roberts’s Response to Trump Is a Damning Indictment of John Roberts

1 month ago | ballsandstrikes.org | Jay Willis

On Tuesday morning, the Supreme Court press office issued a rare public statement from Chief Justice John Roberts himself. “For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision,” Roberts said.
Liberal Superlawyer Lisa Blatt Urges DOJ to Drop Child Sex Abuse Case to Deter Immigration

1 month ago | ballsandstrikes.org | Jay Willis

On Wednesday, the Department of Justice agreed to drop its pending lawsuit against Southwest Key Programs, a Texas company that operates more than two dozen shelters for unaccompanied minors who enter the United States at the southern border.
John Roberts Has Always Been a Trump Justice

1 month ago | ballsandstrikes.org | Jay Willis

Most recently, Roberts authored the opinion in Trump v. United States, a case in which the six Republican justices effectively ended the ongoing criminal investigations into Trump, clearing the way for his election victory five months later.