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Kagan and Urofsky share admiration for Justice Louis Brandeis
“My favorite justice, beyond a doubt, it’s Justice Brandeis,” Justice Elena Kagan said last night at the Supreme Court (“of justices she never met personally,” she qualified). Kagan occupies Justice...
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Rethinking the court’s property-rights jurisprudence in the Progressive Era
The Progressive Party’s presidential candidate in 1924, Robert La Follette, once called the Supreme Court “the one formidable obstacle which must be overcome before anything can be accomplished.”...
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The red and the black: Sacco and Vanzetti’s lesson for Justice Holmes
Most lectures organized by the Supreme Court Historical Society take place in the courtroom – literally and, in terms of their content, figuratively. The lecturer may provide some context for landmark...
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Colleen Sheehan explores Madison’s vision for the Bill of Rights to...
A week from today, the nation will celebrate the 225th anniversary of the ratification of the Bill of Rights, the collective name for the first ten amendments to the Constitution. To commemorate this...
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Women behind the bar (and the bench): Ginsburg presides over re-enactment of...
“So, anything goes?” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg asked counsel Roy Englert on Monday at the Supreme Court, in a re-enactment of the 1948 Supreme Court case Goesaert v. Cleary, an event sponsored by the...
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Panelists look back at — and in one case, personally recall — Gideon v....
In most cases, Supreme Court review is discretionary: Four justices must vote to grant a petition for certiorari — a party’s request for review of a lower court’s decision. Chief Justice Earl Warren...
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SCOTUS for law students: Waiting for Gorsuch
Justice Neil Gorsuch has cast his first consequential vote on the Supreme Court, denying a request for a stay of execution filed by several death-row inmates, and participated – actively, by many...
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Legal scholarship highlight: Getting to know you – The unifying effects of...
Rachael K. Hinkle is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University at Buffalo, SUNY. Morgan Hazelton is an Assistant Professor of Political Science and Law (by Courtesy) at St. Louis...
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Burger would lead charge ‘to the ramparts’ to defend rule of law, lecturer says
The late Chief Justice Warren Burger was committed to the rule of law and the moral authority of the Supreme Court, and he would have led the charge against contemporary attacks on the law and the...
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Roe: Telling the stories behind the landmark decision
When walking into a play titled Roe, one might expect a dry analysis of a legal case or a fiery pro-choice rally. Instead, Roe delivered a clever, often comic portrayal of the two women at the center...
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When the chief justice serves as secretary of state: Saikrishna Prakash on...
The first three articles of the U.S. Constitution establish the three branches of the federal government – legislative, executive and judicial. This separation of powers provides a check on the...
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Chief Justice Salmon Chase on the permanency of the Union, and Cynthia...
In Texas v. White in 1869, Chief Justice Salmon Chase famously wrote for the Supreme Court that the “Constitution, in all its provisions, looks to an indestructible Union composed of indestructible...
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Portrait of a justice: Roberts and Barrett on the life and legacy of Robert...
Among the privileges and immunities of the chief justice is the right to adorn the walls of the Supreme Court. And in the justices’ private conference room, Chief Justice John Roberts has chosen to...
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Legal scholarship highlight: Justice Scalia’s textualist legacy
Jonathan R. Siegel is Professor of Law at George Washington University Law School. The late Justice Antonin Scalia left his mark on the law in many ways, but perhaps his greatest legacy is that he...
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Forgotten Founder: William Ewald on Justice James Wilson, the Constitution...
Despite signing both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and being one of six original justices appointed to the Supreme Court, James Wilson is not often thought of as a leading light...
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Exams aren’t over yet: SCOTUS quiz on “Table for 9”
We dine once a year with the President, and that is all. On other days we take our dinner together, and discuss at table the questions which are argued before us. We are great ascetics, and even deny...
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More to Fortas than scandal – Timothy Huebner on a justice “made in Memphis”
There are two primary biographies of Justice Abe Fortas — Bruce Allen Murphy’s 1988 “Fortas: The Rise and Ruin of a Supreme Court Justice” and Laura Kalman’s 1992 “Abe Fortas: A Biography.” Neither of...
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Thurgood Marshall remembered by Justice Kagan and other former clerks
“His voice is still in my head,” Justice Elena Kagan told the audience on Tuesday when asked how her former boss, Justice Thurgood Marshall, had affected her life. Kagan, along with three other former...
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Does the shape of the Supreme Court’s bench affect oral argument?
In the summer of 1969, shortly after his confirmation as chief justice, Warren Burger stood at the lectern in his new courtroom. Burger faced a straight bench, with the justices’ chairs arranged in a...
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Newly released document gives voice to a private justice
Photo published in the Boston American on January 28, 1916, the day that Brandeis’ nomination to the Supreme Court was announced (Supreme Court Historical Society) “The challenge in writing about...
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