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Thanks to all who joined us at our term preview event yesterday at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center in Washington, D.C., presented by Cooley. For a brief summary of the event, see the On Site section below.
At the Court
The Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to clear the way for it to use the Department of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements database to identify noncitizens on state voter rolls. On Tuesday, the groups challenging this plan filed a response to the administration’s request. The dispute is now fully briefed, and the court’s decision could come at any time.
On Wednesday, the court denied a request for a stay of execution from LeJames Norman, who was sentenced to death for the 2005 murders of Celso Lopez, Tiffani Peacock, and Sam Roberts. Norman was executed in Texas on Wednesday night.
Morning Reads
Missouri GOP still see path for gerrymandered congressional map. Legal experts see little hope.
Jason Hancock, Missouri Independent
Last week, the Supreme Court twice declined to allow Missouri to use a new congressional map designed to favor Republicans in November’s elections, but Republican officials in that state have not yet dropped their fight to use it, according to the Missouri Independent. On Thursday, they will argue in support of the map before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit. Nevertheless, a favorable ruling there “would not, by itself, put the 2025 map back in place,” because the Supreme Court “said its stay will remain in effect while the case is before the 8th Circuit and through any timely petition asking the justices to review the appeals court’s eventual ruling.” Justin Levitt, a law professor at Loyola Marymount University said “there is virtually no chance an 8th Circuit ruling will ultimately” allow Missouri to use the new map. “The war’s over, but there’s still soldiers fighting,” he said.
Alabama Is Set to Execute a Murderer. The Jury Wanted Him to Live.
Rick Rojas, The New York Times (paywalled)
The Supreme Court is considering a request for a stay of execution from Jeffery Lee, who is scheduled to be executed in Alabama on Thursday for killing two people and wounding another while robbing a pawnshop in 1998. Lee’s case has raised “some of the most fraught questions hanging over capital punishment in Alabama,” including on execution methods, according to The New York Times. Lee was scheduled to die by nitrogen gas in June, but “his legal team succeeded in raising doubts about the constitutionality of” that execution method, and the Supreme Court denied Alabama’s request to allow Lee’s execution to go forward. Now, Lee is scheduled to die by lethal injection, but some “prominent legal and political figures in Alabama – including some Republicans who are generally supportive of the death penalty – have demanded clemency,” in part because the jury for his trial wanted “to sentence him to life in prison without parole.” The Times noted that “Lee’s case is a relic of an era when judges had the power to override a jury’s sentencing decision, a practice forbidden in Alabama since 2017.”
Newman, 99-Year-Old Judge, Could Hear Cases Again Under GOP Bill
Michael Shapiro, Bloomberg Law
Rep. Scott Fitzgerald, a Republican from Wisconsin, has “introduced legislation that could force the Federal Circuit to let Judge Pauline Newman, who at 99 is the nation’s oldest active federal judge, hear appeals again,” according to Bloomberg Law. His bill takes aim at the “one-year suspensions that have sidelined Newman for the past three years” amid an inquiry into her mental fitness by capping “such suspension orders at two years.” Fitzgerald’s “legislation would also give investigated judges the limited opportunity for judicial review of suspension orders. Newman sought to challenge her suspensions administratively and in district court, but the DC Circuit ruled that the Judicial Conduct and Disability Act didn’t allow her to challenge the particulars of her case in a federal suit. The US Supreme Court declined to review that decision.”
The Supreme Court’s Conservatives Have a Clear Logic on Voting
Noah Feldman, Bloomberg (paywalled)
In a column for Bloomberg, Noah Feldman explored the significance of the fact that “four of the six conservative justices,” all but Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, “helped to block the Trump administration’s mail-in ballot scheme from going into place this Election Day” in a decision earlier this week. The decision confirms “that the justices, or at least seven of the nine, consider it part of their job to assure the regularity and orderliness of elections,” according to Feldman, who noted that the Supreme Court also “stood firm” in the face of potential election interference just before and just after the 2020 presidential election. “Then, as now, Trump expressed frustration and anger at the justices he appointed for not being ‘loyal.’ That didn’t matter to those justices, all of whom firmly believe that their loyalty is to the Constitution (as they interpret it) and not to Trump,” Feldman wrote.
On Site
SCOTUS Focus
An interview with Sen. Ted Cruz on his biography of Justice Thomas
Randy Maniloff spoke with Sen. Ted Cruz about his new biography of Justice Clarence Thomas. Cruz, who conducted “over nine hours of one-on-one interviews” with Thomas while working on the book, said his goals for the project included raising awareness of Thomas’ "personal journey," which he says is “unlike any other Supreme Court justice.”
Contributor Corner
The foreign affairs origins of domestic executive supremacy
In a series of recent rulings, the Supreme Court has expanded presidential authority. In his Court Beyond Borders column, Martin Flaherty contends that the roots of this trend rest in earlier disputes over foreign affairs.
A Closer Look
Previewing the 2026-27 Term at the SCOTUSblog Summit
At our term preview event on Wednesday at Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center, we explored the Supreme Court’s work – and the upcoming term, in particular – from multiple angles. Speakers discussed highly anticipated oral arguments, ongoing debates over court reform, and how complicated it can be to predict the impact of a ruling in the immediate aftermath of its release.
The event began with a fireside chat between Zach Shemtob, SCOTUSblog’s executive editor, and Elizabeth Prelogar, a partner at Cooley and the former U.S. Solicitor General. Among other topics, they discussed how Prelogar prepares to argue before the court and whether arguments feel easier once you have several under your belt. (She confirmed that they do.) Prelogar also described how arguing before a court with a 6-3 conservative majority differs from arguing before a 5-4 court, explaining that there’s less of an incentive now for advocates to aim their arguments at a single swing justice. Instead, they are “thinking more creatively” to build a coalition of justices in support of their position.
After the fireside chat, Sarah Isgur, David French, and SCOTUSblog’s Amy Howe took the stage for a live recording of the Advisory Opinions podcast. They briefly reflected on the Supreme Court’s decision not to allow the Trump administration to implement parts of a rule on mail-in voting – agreeing that the court hasn’t seen the last of election-related disputes – before turning their attention to the term ahead. Isgur challenged Howe and French to name the most important case that’s been scheduled for argument so far, which led to a discussion of Viramontes v. Cook County, a Second Amendment case on whether bans on AR-15s and similar semiautomatic rifles are constitutional. Isgur contended that the most significant case is Suncor Energy v. County Commissioners of Boulder County, on whether federal environmental law supersedes state-law claims against oil and gas companies over their alleged role in exacerbating climate change. Isgur described it as a “huge culture war case.”
The next session was a discussion on Congress and the court, which featured Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), and was moderated by Elie Honig, senior legal analyst for CNN. While Durbin was more critical than Issa of how the Supreme Court is navigating the second Trump administration – for example, Durbin said that it’s a “serious problem” for the court to issue unexplained decisions on the “shadow docket” – both men agreed that it’s a difficult moment for the court, as Americans increasingly view it as a political institution. As to potential court reforms, Durbin asserted that it’s not “realistic” to expect Democrats to be able to increase the number of justices even if the party takes control of the Senate after November’s elections. Instead, he emphasized the need for the justices to consider working on their own to update the court’s ethics code; Issa agreed that it’s important for the ethics code to be strong.
The final panel of the afternoon brought together Brett Gerry, the chief legal officer of Boeing; Brian Callanan, the general counsel for TD Bank U.S.; and Jeff Taylor, the general counsel for ExxonMobil. At moderator David Lat’s prompting, they discussed how AI is affecting their work, what they look for in outside counsel, and their views on the Supreme Court’s “business docket.”
Look for additional coverage of the 2026 SCOTUSblog Summit on SCOTUSblog and Advisory Opinions in the coming days.
SCOTUS Quote
MR. HORWICH: “… And the fact that it did not comment further should not be a reason to – to not pay attention to the structural and textual changes that it did make. I’d like to reserve.”
CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: “Thank you, counsel.”
JUSTICE SCALIA: “We have tall lawyers today. What is this, tall lawyer day?”
— United States v. O'Brien (2010)
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