The Supreme Court unanimously sided with the federal government on Wednesday in Urias-Orellana v. Bondi, holding in an opinion by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson that federal courts of appeals must use a relatively deferential standard of review when assessing the Board of Immigration Appeals’ determination that asylum seekers did not experience the level of persecution necessary to qualify for asylum protections.

We were live as the court released its opinions in Urias-Orellana v. Bondi and Galette v. New Jersey Transit Corp..

Empirical SCOTUS is a recurring series by Adam Feldman that looks at Supreme Court data, primarily in the form of opinions and oral arguments, to provide insights into the justices’ decision making and what we can expect from the court in the future.

Perhaps one of the most widespread practices that goes (relatively) unnoticed beyond Supreme Court aficionados and obsessives is what I call the “SCOTUS attorney switcheroo.” This is the change in counsel as a case travels from the lower courts to the Supreme Court. Although this may not – on the surface – seem like a very big deal, it has implications not only on the nature of what the court hears but what actually gets decided by the justices.

Welcome to SCOTUSblog’s newest recurring series, in which we interview experts on different supreme courts around the world and how they compare to our own. For our debut column, we figured it only made sense to go back to the mother country and its mother court. And to help us shed some light on the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, we could think of no one better than Mark Elliott.

Civil Rights and Wrongs is a recurring series by Daniel Harawa covering criminal justice and civil rights cases before the court.

In two recent decisions, the Supreme Court summarily reversed – that is, reversed without full briefing or oral argument – the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit’s grants of habeas relief to state petitioners. First, in Clark v. Sweeney, the court held that the 4th Circuit violated the “party-presentation principle” when it granted habeas relief on a basis the petitioner “never asserted.” Then, in Klein v. Martin, the court held that the 4th Circuit was not sufficiently deferential to the state court’s decision denying post-conviction relief as required by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996.

That the Supreme Court reversed in two habeas cases may not come as much of a surprise. Habeas petitioners have not fared well before the Supreme Court for some time. But the repeated summary reversal of grants of habeas relief sends a more troubling message: that federal habeas relief should largely be understood as beyond reach.