When the justices hold their private conference on Friday, Feb. 20, the petitions for review that they are slated to consider will include one from President Donald Trump, asking the Supreme Court to weigh in on the 2023 verdict against him in a civil suit brought by E. Jean Carroll. Trump calls the lawsuit “facially implausible” and “politically motivated”; Carroll urges the court to deny Trump’s petition, telling the justices that the verdict would stand regardless of their ruling.

The Supreme Court has made a mess of the law concerning the Second Amendment. Two years ago, in the last Supreme Court decision about the Second Amendment, United States v. Rahimi, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson in a concurring opinion noted how “lower courts are struggling” with recent precedent concerning this amendment and that “confusion plagues the lower courts.”  

There are two cases on the docket this term regarding gun laws and they likely will exacerbate, not clear up, the confusion. The court could – and should – solve much of this problem by treating the Second Amendment like other rights in the Constitution.

Controlling Opinions is a recurring series by Richard Re that explores the interaction of law, ideology, and discretion at the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court is creating a formidable presidential power to remove subordinate executive officials, even from many once-independent agencies. Yet the court is not simply tearing down the principle of agency independence associated with Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, the court’s 1935 decision approving statutory limits on the president’s power to fire commissioners of the FTC. To fully understand the court’s removal jurisprudence – how and why it is changing – executive officials’ for-cause tenure protection must be understood in at least three dimensions.

Friday, Jan. 9, was the Supreme Court’s first announced opinion day of the term, and the excitement that typically surrounds that occasion was heightened by rumors that the court would release its ruling on President Donald Trump’s tariffs. It felt as if the eyes of the whole country were on One First Street – well, the Supreme Court’s website – as the clock struck 10 a.m. and the landing page for opinions of the court gained an entry.

The Supreme Court on Monday morning agreed to weigh in on the interpretation of a federal law, enacted in the wake of Judge Robert Bork’s unsuccessful Supreme Court confirmation hearings, intended to protect videotape rental histories from public disclosure. The justices also reversed a ruling by a federal appeals court that had ordered a new trial for a Maryland man convicted of attempted murder.

The Supreme Court did not act on several high-profile petitions for review that it has now considered at several conferences in a row, including petitions challenging the constitutionality of a federal law banning the possession of guns by people convicted of felonies and a petition by oil and gas companies, which argue that federal laws preclude local governments in Colorado from bringing lawsuits in which they contend that the companies have knowingly played a role in exacerbating climate change.