Search Results for: alito

The Supreme Court of the United States Wednesday voted 5-4 to uphold a ruling that Yeshiva University must recognize an LBGTQ student group. The majority stated that the university must pursue a challenge to the lower court’s ruling in state court before entering into federal court. Last week, Justice Sonia Sotomayor temporarily blocked the order [...]

For nearly a century, many progressives have seen the Constitution, and especially the Supreme Court, as allies in the effort to make our political and economic life more democratic. For a long time, this trust seemed warranted. The initially reactionary New Deal Court came to embrace the power of the national government to limit corporate [...]

The 1996 federal law that protects the privacy of our medical records –the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act or HIPAA – has from the outset contained a carefully crafted exception for personal health information that might bear directly on the commission of a crime. But with the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the [...]

Imagine a system under which the U.S. Supreme Court hears cases as panels consisting of three to five Justices rather than as a full court of nine. Suppose that the Chief Justice makes a five-Justice panel consisting of himself, Justice Samuel Alito, Justice Clarence Thomas, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, and Justice Elena Kagan to hear abortion [...]

While the immediate threats to women’s access to healthcare are obvious, it could be years before the United States comes to terms with the gravity of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization opinion. This brief essay focuses on why Dobbs is celebrated by white supremacists as an answer to “the great replacement,” a type [...]

The US Supreme Court announced Thursday that it will hear a controversial election case which deals with an emerging legal theory based on the elections clause of the US Constitution. The theory claims that under the elections clause, state legislatures have unchecked power to determine election policy and implementation, and that power cannot be checked [...]

The US Supreme Court ruled Thursday in a 5-4 decision that US President Joe Biden can end former President Donald Trump’s Migration Protection Protocols (MPP) policy, also known as the “Remain in Mexico” policy. This overturns a US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruling that kept the MPP policy in place. The MPP, [...]

The US Supreme Court Thursday ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) does not have the authority under section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act to enforce proposed power plant emission limitations in West Virginia v. EPA. The majority relied on the Major Questions Doctrine, a doctrine that has never been used in a Supreme [...]

The US Supreme Court Monday ruled that the US government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a doctor knowingly prescribed opioids “in an unauthorized manner” in order to secure a conviction for the illegal distribution of controlled substances. In the case of Ruan v. United States, Doctors Xiulu Ruan and Shakeel Kahnalong  were convicted [...]

In Terminiello v. Chicago, Justice Jackson famously commented that the constitution “is not a suicide pact.” His point was in response to the Court’s decision to invalidate Chicago’s disorderly conduct conviction of Arthur Terminiello, who had given a speech that threatened to breach the peace. Writing for the Court, Justice Douglas rejected Chicago’s assessment that [...]