Ruth Marcus

During his confirmation hearings, in 1991, Justice Clarence Thomas employed an arresting image to assure senators that he would be an impartial jurist.

The day after the Justice Department announced the creation of an enormous “Anti-Weaponization Fund” to recompense self-proclaimed victims of

An unsigned order from the Supreme Court in a long-running Alabama redistricting case legitimatized a map that a lower court claimed “amounted to intentional racial discrimination.”

In a Senate that took its constitutional role seriously, Blanche would not win confirmation a second time.

In May, 1939, more than nine hundred Jewish refugees sailed aboard the M.S. St. Louis from Hamburg, seeking refuge from Nazi persecution—first

If anything, this term served to reinforce the dominance of the conservative majority, its willingness to overturn precedents, and the ideological chasm between the Court's liberal and conservative wings. It saw a doubling, compared with the previous term, of the share of cases in which the Justices split 6–3 along ideological lines. Last week, the Court said a Rastafarian inmate whose dreadlocks were shaved by prison guards, in violation of his constitutional rights, could not sue officials for damages; the ruling put the majority to the right of the Trump Administration, which supported the prisoner, and may set the stage for future restrictions on Congress's use of federal funds to control state behavior. Two days later, it struck down a Hawaii law barring concealed-carry permit holders from bringing their guns into privately owned spaces without permission. On Tuesday, the Court allowed states to block transgender girls from participating in girls' and women's sports. It also freed political parties to spend unlimited amounts in coördination with their candidates, jettisoning a two-decade-old precedent and leaving what Kagan termed “a legal regime increasingly unable to stop political corruption.”

Once a harsh critic of Donald Trump, Lindsey Graham became one of the President’s most dependable allies—a sign of what it takes to remain influential in today’s Republican Party.

The President promised “really, really big news” before his prime-time speech. What he delivered—padded by heavily redacted declassified documents—felt more like Pam Bondi's bogus Epstein binders than any true revelation.

The recent subpoenas of reporters make clear that the President is trying to threaten the press. Few protections are in place to stop him.

The prosecution's central claim “would be laughable,” one former federal judge noted, if it weren't intended “to deprive a man of his liberty.”