The Trump administration is hoping no one notices that, although federal law *defines* "domestic terrorism," it provides no special authorities against anyone whose behavior *meets* that definition.| One First
The Supreme Court is much less popular and much more divisive today than it was when John Roberts was sworn in as the 17th Chief Justice on September 29, 2005. And at least much of that is his fault.| www.stevevladeck.com
The Court's recent treatment of Humphrey's Executor may only encourage lower-court judges to do exactly what Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh purported to rail against in August: not follow precedents.| www.stevevladeck.com
Notwithstanding the Court's June ruling, President Trump's birthright citizenship executive order remains blocked—a broader lesson on the risks of paying attention to only one part of the news cycle.| www.stevevladeck.com
The federal government's authorities to use the military for domestic law enforcement are old, broad, and vague. They may soon become far more relevant than they've been for quite a long time.| www.stevevladeck.com
Justice Barrett is right that "administrative" stays should rarely provide a basis for emergency relief from the Supreme Court, but she's wrong about *why.* That error led her (and the Court) astray.| www.stevevladeck.com
As emergency relief has become more prevalent in the Supreme Court, so, too, have "administrative" stays—notwithstanding Justice Barrett's March 2024 concurrence urging more restraint in the practice.| www.stevevladeck.com
The Court's 1935 rulings effectively allowing the federal government to override the contractual consequences of devaluing U.S. currency were viewed in apocalyptic terms at the time, but aren't today.| One First
Walking through the only opinion written in support of Monday's Supreme Court stay in the ICE roving arrests case helps to highlight *how* the Court may be stacking the deck in Trump-related cases.| One First
Justice Kavanaugh's attempt to re-brand how the Supreme Court handles emergency applications is belied by how the Supreme Court is actually handling emergency applications.| One First
Law is not—and never will be—a perfect constraint on government action. But claims that legal limits have become wholly irrelevant to the current administration are not just wrong; they're dangerous.| One First
A quick look at President Trump's (apparent) plan to send uninvited and un-federalized Texas National Guard troops into Illinois—and how it could (and maybe should) quickly end up in the Supreme Court| One First
Two appellate rulings from opposite ends of the country on Friday illustrate how much the Court's new term is going to be dominated by Trump cases—even ones in which the Court has already intervened.| www.stevevladeck.com
A weekly newsletter aiming to make the Supreme Court’s rulings, procedures, and history more accessible to all. Click to read One First, a Substack publication with tens of thousands of subscribers.| www.stevevladeck.com
The Supreme Court's 1869 ruling allowing Congress to take away its jurisdiction over a pending case is quite a story in its own right, and has important separation-of-powers implications for today| www.stevevladeck.com
Attorney General Bondi's TikTok-related letters rest on a view of presidential power that has no support in even the most capacious understandings of the "unitary executive" theory.| www.stevevladeck.com
President Trump's latest emergency application rests on a contrived procedural emergency and a forfeited substantive claim—apparently banking on the view that the Court doesn't mind being played.| One First
Just like the earlier rulings that Justice Gorsuch claims lower courts are defying, his concurrence in the NIH grant cutoffs case would be a lot more convincing if it showed more of its work.| One First
At the lowest moment of his presidency (if not the Civil War), Abraham Lincoln was committed to protecting the people's right to vote him out in favor of a negotiated end to the war—and the Union.| One First
Thursday's ruling in the NetChoice case appears to suggest that one of the key justices is either being inconsistent or completely hypocritical in how he is voting on emergency applications.| One First
The beginning of the new academic year raises an acute version of an age-old question: how much should law professors teach the law on the ground versus (or in addition to) the law on the books?| www.stevevladeck.com
Too many Americans don't understand, at a basic level, *why* the Constitution requires due process when the government deprives anyone of their life, liberty, or property.| www.stevevladeck.com
The Trump administration's emergency applications in three birthright citizenship cases are a cynical effort to mitigate the effects of an inevitable loss on the merits. The justices shouldn't bite.| www.stevevladeck.com
There's a lot going on in the Court's cryptic, 5-4 ruling in the foreign aid funding cases. Here's my (very) quick attempt to unpack some of the most important takeaways.| www.stevevladeck.com
President Trump has vowed to go after birthright citizenship on his first day in office. He's going to lose, but in a way that may well provide cover for other controversial immigration measures| www.stevevladeck.com
The second Trump administration's most controversial policy initiatives are likely to reach the Court quickly. The question will then become what lessons (if any) the justices have learned since 2017.| www.stevevladeck.com
In providing as broad an endorsement of "preclusive" executive power as any we've seen from the Supreme Court, the majority opinion will have implications far beyond criminal prosecutions| www.stevevladeck.com
The Supreme Court's recent jurisprudence expanding presidential control of the bureaucracy undermines one of the common critiques of judicial deference to executive branch interpretations of statutes| www.stevevladeck.com
Each of the last two terms, the United States has been a party to at least half of the cases on the Supreme Court's merits docket. That's a big deal, and not just because it's *never* happened before.| www.stevevladeck.com
The Supreme Court capped off a busy week with two major late-Friday-afternoon rulings on emergency applications—and a harmless but nevertheless alarming glitch prematurely releasing today's orders.| www.stevevladeck.com
The challenge to Trump's removal of the head of the Office of Special Counsel raises unique procedural and substantive issues likely to prevent it from serving as a referendum—in either direction.| www.stevevladeck.com
Like any federal enclave, the federal government has plenary power over the District of Columbia. But Congress has delegated most of that power to local officials; it would take new laws to undo that.| One First
Having the justices spend much of the year out in the country was an important means by which Congress brought the nascent Supreme Court to the people—and, as importantly, the people to the Court.| One First
The Supreme Court isn't responsible for partisan gerrymandering. But current events in Texas underscore how much its 2019 ruling in Rucho has left (some) states free to radically abuse the practice.| One First
Debunking the unpersuasive (and also rather unprovable) claim that the Supreme Court's behavior on Trump-related emergency applications is largely a response to lower courts abusing their own powers.| One First
Wednesday's ruling in Boyle isn't the first time the Court has given precedential effect to an unsigned order, but it's the first time it tried to explain *why,* for reasons that ... fail to persuade.| www.stevevladeck.com
Two very different episodes on Thursday provide growing evidence of a Department of Justice that is showing less respect, by the day, for the rule of law.| www.stevevladeck.com
With the justices handing down so many significant grants of emergency relief without rationales, it's worth identifying the arguments in support of unexplained rulings—and why they fail to persuade.| www.stevevladeck.com
The June 26 ruling allowing South Carolina to get away with kicking Planned Parenthood out of Medicaid is based on a troubling new presumption—and includes an even more alarming concurrence.| www.stevevladeck.com
One defense of the Court's behavior on Trump-related emergency applications is that the justices are picking their battles. If so, the question becomes which battles they actually intend to fight.| www.stevevladeck.com
Thursday's denouement in the third-country removals case was not surprising. But the split between Justice Kagan and Justices Sotomayor and Jackson highlights a deeper (and July 4-appropriate) debate.| www.stevevladeck.com
The Supreme Court closed the balance of the October 2024 Term with both actions and opinions that bespeak a new vision of how it exercises power—one that is as dangerous as it will be unpredictable.| www.stevevladeck.com
The continuing fallout from Monday afternoon’s ruling in the third-country removals case is an object lesson for why the justices should be providing explanations when they grant emergency relief.| www.stevevladeck.com
The majority did not just greenlight an especially odious immigration policy without any explanation; it did so in a case in which the government defied the district court—twice—with no consequence.| www.stevevladeck.com
The justices have granted at least some of the relief the Justice Department has sought in each of its last 10 applications. There are some obvious reasons why, but also some less obvious ones.| www.stevevladeck.com
President Trump's Saturday night "memorandum" federalizing 2000 California National Guard troops is a tentative step toward abusing authorities for domestic use of the military, but a dangerous one.| www.stevevladeck.com
The U.S. Department of Justice and the Texas Attorney General's Office turned the legal system on its head on Wednesday—and all because the Texas Legislature refused to repeal a 24-year-old state law.| www.stevevladeck.com
The increasingly loud claim that district courts are abusing their powers by blocking Trump administration policies depends upon a series of indefensibly selective (and easily rebutted) arguments.| www.stevevladeck.com
The Trump administration's latest request for emergency relief from the Supreme Court hides the government's deeply problematic litigation behavior behind a plausible jurisdictional objection.| www.stevevladeck.com
The government's arrest and detention of a pro-Palestinian Columbia student (and green card holder) raises difficult questions about both technical immigration statutes and the First Amendment.| www.stevevladeck.com
How the justices navigate the six pending emergency applications from the Trump administration will tell us a lot about how much (or how little) the Court will be a bulwark against the President.| www.stevevladeck.com
A quick take on some of the questions raised by President Trump's ... dubious invocation of a 1798 statute as a basis for arresting, detaining, and removing non-citizens with ties to Tren de Aragua.| www.stevevladeck.com
Thursday's birthright citizenship oral argument hits at least somewhat different after and in light of Friday's Alien Enemies Act ruling—in which the Court ... provided relief to non-parties.| www.stevevladeck.com
A very quick breakdown of Friday afternoon's quietly significant ruling slapping down the lower courts in the Northern District of Texas Alien Enemies Act litigation—and what it means going forward.| www.stevevladeck.com
The Trump administration's geographic gamesmanship with immigration detainees crystallizes the need for the Supreme Court to preserve (at least some) nationwide injunctions.| www.stevevladeck.com
The Trump administration's Monday spending freeze is likely to provoke a crisis over the constitutionality of "impoundment"—one that the justices could well have to resolve *very* soon.| www.stevevladeck.com
The unprecedented (and unsustainable) flurry of emergency requests in Trump-related cases shows no signs of letting up. The harder question is whether the justices are willing to do anything about it.| www.stevevladeck.com
Justice Alito's after-the-fact opinion dissenting from the Court's early-Saturday-morning Alien Enemy Act ruling rests on a revealing array of misrepresentations, misstatements, and non-sequiturs.| www.stevevladeck.com
A weekly sneak-peek audio companion to the "One First" newsletter| www.stevevladeck.com
Just before 1:00 a.m., the justices (aggressively) stepped back into the Alien Enemy Act litigation—in a decision suggesting that a majority understands that these are no longer normal circumstances.| www.stevevladeck.com
The Trump administration isn't defying the letter of Thursday's Supreme Court ruling. But it's daring the federal courts to take much more aggressive steps to block its immigration policies.| www.stevevladeck.com
How one reads Thursday's ruling ordering the federal government to "facilitate" Abrego Garcia's return depends upon how much (or how little) one expects *this* administration to turn square corners.| www.stevevladeck.com
In normal times, it might be possible to defend the Supreme Court's 5-4 ruling on Monday vacating a pair of temporary restraining orders in the Alien Enemy Act case. But these aren't normal times.| www.stevevladeck.com
Federal courts don't have jurisdiction over foreign prisons. That doesn't mean that they're powerless when the U.S. government wrongly removes someone from the United States.| www.stevevladeck.com
If those who oppose non-plaintiff-specific relief are doing so on principle and not just politics, they should support more robust nationwide class action suits against the federal government.| www.stevevladeck.com
President Trump and his supporters are mounting increasingly noisy attacks on lower-court judges. But their claims combine shameless hypocrisy with shameful distortions of the facts.| www.stevevladeck.com
The too-strange-for-fiction story of how Justice Stephen Field was almost assassinated in 1889 and the important Supreme Court presidential power precedent that his bodyguard's actions precipitated.| www.stevevladeck.com
A weekly sneak-peek audio companion to the "One First" newsletter| www.stevevladeck.com
Congress has used its power to impeach and remove federal judges only sparingly. Calls from Elon Musk and Republican lawmakers to impeach judges who rule against Trump are powerful reminders of why.| www.stevevladeck.com