Supreme Court

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• SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
  1/12/2023
  

  Hamline Controversy Shows How Religion and Neoliberal Administration Converge to Reject Expertise

  by Alexander Jabbari

  An instructive contrast can be drawn from a 1997 controversy over a frieze depicting Muhammad on the wall of the United States Supreme Court. Since then, post-9/11 Islamophobia, a culture of deliberate trolling under the banner of free speech, and the rise of corporate-style university management have drained the capacity for nuance.

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• SOURCE: Christianity Today
  1/13/2023
  

  Council of Christian Colleges and Universities Gets Court Win on Exemptions to Discrimination Law

  A judge dismissed a lawsuit by LGBTQ students that challenged the faith-based exemptions that Christian colleges can claim from enforcement of antidiscrimination laws. 

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  12/14/2022
  

  After Bruen: One Nation, Under Guns

  by Ryan Busse

  "As bad as America’s gun-violence problem is, it could be about to get much worse," says former gun industry insider turned whistleblower. The selective reading of the historical record advanced by Justice Thomas's opinion would force judges to play historian to decide cases, destabilizing gun law in many ways. 

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  12/2/2022
  

  The Blindness of the Supreme Court's "Colorblindness"

  by Drew Gilpin Faust

  "Affirmative action opened a door I would walk through.... My professors, soon to be my colleagues, could imagine me among them because the very notion of women faculty had been given a legitimacy and a thinkability."

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• SOURCE: Mother Jones
  12/6/2022
  

  SCOTUS Seems Poised to Overrule Democracy By Drawing on a Historical Forgery

  In 1818, Charles Pinckney of South Carolina sent John Quincy Adams a fake document that made it look like Pinckney was a principal author of the 1787 Constitution. At the time, the ruse was rejected. Why are Supreme Court conservatives looking to this document in to justify their decisions?  

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  11/14/2022
  

  The Conservative Movement Has Captured SCOTUS. Now What?

  by Linda Greenhouse

  As the institution with the power to advance conservative goals without popular support, it was inevitable that the right would focus on packing the judiciary, explains veteran court reporter Linda Greenhouse. 

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  11/8/2022
  

  Haaland v. Brackeen: The Case that Could Break Native Sovereignty

  by Rebecca Nagle

  "The U.S. has been passing laws that treat tribes and tribal citizens differently from non-Native citizens since the founding of the republic. If that is unconstitutional, the entire legal structure defending the legal rights of Indigenous nations could crumble."

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• SOURCE: Organization of American Historians
  11/9/2022
  

  OAH, AHA File Joint SCOTUS Brief in Case Affecting Indigenous Adoption and Family Rights

  "If the court strikes down the ICWA in whole or in part, the decision could have devastating impacts on Native American families and, potentially, on federal Indian law writ large. Resuming the practice of Native child removal would cause active harm to Native families as well as jeopardize the future sovereignty of tribal governments.

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  10/29/2022
  

  A Warning from Weimar: The Danger of Courts Hostile to Democracy

  by Samuel Huneke

  Far from being guardrails for democracy, Weimar courts were implacably hostile to it, and paved the way for its overthrow by leniency toward right-wing political violence. 

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• SOURCE: Vox
  10/30/2022
  

  Inside the Affirmative Action Cases Before SCOTUS

  Edward Blum is a longtime conservative legal activist who is leading lawsuits claiming that affirmative action in admissions violates the requirement that the constituiton be color-blind; whether there is any such principle is debatable. Includes insights from historians Hugh Davis Graham and Eddie R. Cole. 

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• SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
  10/31/2022
  

  A Roundup of Affirmative Action Takes as SCOTUS Hears Arguments in Harvard, UNC Cases

  From left, right and center, and from pundits and legal scholars, a roundup of analysis on the oral arguments in Supreme Court cases that could eliminate race-conscious admissions policies. 

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  10/31/2022
  

  Defendant in Michigan Admissions Case: Ending Affirmative Action Would be Disastrous

  by Lee C. Bollinger and Geoffrey R. Stone

  The former President of the University of Michigan says that diversity in higher education remains a compelling reason to allow race as one factor in college admissions. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  10/28/2022
  

  SCOTUS Affirmative Action Cases Hinge on History of Brown and the 14th Amendment

  by Linda Greenhouse

  Neither Brown nor the 14th Amendment were driven by a belief in a "colorblind" Constitution; instead, they were rooted in the historically specific context of racial oppression. The plaintiffs in two cases before the court want to obscure that history, says veteran court reporter Linda Greenhouse.

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  10/24/2022
  

  2005 Diary Entry Shows Justice Alito Told Ted Kennedy He Respected Roe Precedent

  In his pre-confirmation interview with the Senator, Alito claimed he wrote antiabortion legal memos because he wanted to please his bosses in the Reagan administration. This failed to reassure Kennedy, who voted against his nomination and wrote skeptically of the judge's integrity in his diary. 

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• 10/23/2022
  

  Originalism is Doomed to Failure. Will it Destroy Democracy First?

  by Richard Striner

  Textualism as a theory of judicial interpretation arose as a semantic game among academics, but has been put to brutal use by the Federalist Society to undermine the democracy that most 21st century Americans enjoy. 

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• SOURCE: NPR
  8/18/2022
  

  Southern Republicans Want to Narrow the Census Definition of Black Identity – Why?

  In a case that involves both the history of voting rights and exclusion and changes in the Census's recognition of complex ethnic identities since 1980, the Supreme Court may reverse a longstanding assumption about which voters are properly understood to be Black. 

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• SOURCE: NPR
  10/17/2022
  

  SCOTUS Declines to Hear Challenge to Citizenship Law Disadvantaging American Samoans

  Residents of US territories are able to receive birthright citizenship if an act of Congress grants it to them. While Congress's refusal to do so for residents of American Samoa has clear racist roots, the Court declined to hear a case challenging this exclusion. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  10/10/2022
  

  Does Justice Jackson Offer a Path to Defend Rights Through Originalism?

  by Evan Turiano

  Abolitionists and the drafters of the Reconstruction Amendments understood that the legitimacy of broader claims to rights and citizenship depended on making a claim on the purposes set forth for the Constitution. Ketanji Brown Jackson's recent voting rights dissent suggests she hopes to revive that tradition. 

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• SOURCE: NPR
  10/8/2022
  

  Supreme Court Sketch Artist Retires after 45 Years

  Although he was paid to sketch the proceedings for decades, Art Lien believes the time has come for cameras in the SCOTUS chambers. 

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• SOURCE: NPR
  10/4/2022
  

  The Writer of "The Onion" SCOTUS Brief Takes Parody Seriously

  The satirical newspaper's brief employed the rhetorical mode to lay out the free speech implications of a case involving a man who faced retaliatory arrest for making a parody facebook account for his local police department.