The Supreme Court on Friday afternoon added four new cases to its argument docket for the 2025-26 term. In a brief list of orders from the justices’ private conference earlier in the day, the court agreed to weigh in on one of the challenges to President Donald Trump’s order ending birthright citizenship (covered in a separate story).

The justices will be treading on familiar ground during next week’s argument in FS Credit Opportunities Corp. v Saba Capital Master Fund, to take place on Wednesday, Dec. 10. Like many cases the court has heard in the last decade, this one asks the justices to consider whether the federal courts should recognize a federal statute as implying a private right of action (that is, providing the ability for private parties to sue) when the words of the statute do not explicitly authorize it.

In 2002, the Supreme Court ruled in Atkins v. Virginia that the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment bars the execution of people who are intellectually disabled. Next week, on Wednesday, Dec. 10, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Hamm v. Smith on how and whether courts should assess a defendant’s claim under Atkins when he has taken multiple IQ tests. The state of Alabama contends that the lower court, in throwing out Joseph Smith’s death sentence, focused too heavily on the individual results of each of Smith’s five IQ tests, when the cumulative effect of his IQ scores indicates that he is not intellectually disabled. Smith counters that the lower court did not rely on “a single IQ score” to reach its conclusion and instead looked at a broad array of evidence.

Major Questions is a recurring series by Adam White, which analyzes the court’s approach to administrative law, agencies, and the lower courts.

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The 2025-26 Supreme Court term’s first cases on presidential power are shaping up to be a study in contrasts.

Last month, when the court heard oral arguments in Learning Resources v. Trump, President Donald Trump’s sweeping assertion of the executive branch’s tariff powers was met with palpable judicial skepticism, and not just among the progressive justices. Some of the conservative justices, perhaps Neil Gorsuch most prominently among them, voiced serious concerns over the scale of presidential power at stake, and the migration of power from the legislative branch to the executive.

Yet in next week’s oral arguments in Trump v. Slaughter, on Trump’s refusal to heed statutory limits in firing two Democratic leaders of the Federal Trade Commission, the justices might seem much less skeptical of Trump’s assertion of power.

Updated on Dec. 5 at 8:58 a.m.

The Supreme Court on Thursday gave the green light to Texas’ efforts to be able to use a new congressional map favorable to Republicans in the 2026 elections despite a lower court’s ruling that the map unconstitutionally sorts voters based on race. In a brief, unsigned opinion, a majority of the court granted the state’s request to pause the ruling issued earlier this month by a three-judge district court in El Paso. That ruling had been on hold since Nov. 21, when Justice Samuel Alito – who handles emergency appeals from Texas – temporarily stayed it to give the justices time to consider the state’s request; Wednesday’s decision extends that hold indefinitely.