The Supreme Court heard oral argument on Tuesday in Hunter v. United States about what exceptions exist to federal defendants’ waivers of their right to appeal. The justices seemed poised to endorse more exceptions than just the two the government endorsed – ones for ineffective assistance of counsel in entering into a plea agreement and for sentences above the statutory maximum. A number of justices also expressed misgivings about relying on contract law to define exceptions to appellate waivers, the framework that both Hunter and the government principally invoked, and a majority seemed likely to hold, at a minimum, that a defendant could escape from an appellate waiver when enforcing it would result in a “miscarriage of justice,” a standard that a number of federal courts of appeals have applied.

A group of Syrian nationals urged the Supreme Court on Thursday to leave in place a ruling by a federal judge in New York City that allows them to remain in the United States despite efforts by the Trump administration to end their eligibility for the program giving them a right to stay here. In a 40-page filing, the Syrian nationals told the justices that the case was not the kind of “emergency” justifying the court’s intervention. And in particular, they said, the government had not shown that it would be permanently harmed if they were allowed to retain their legal status while litigation continues. To the contrary, they wrote, they would be the ones who would “face irreparable injuries through lost employment, the risk of imminent detention and possible deportation to a country in crisis.”

The Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled in Galette v. New Jersey Transit Corporation that two men who were seriously injured in New York and Pennsylvania by buses operated by New Jersey Transit can sue the transit agency in those states. In a unanimous opinion by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the justices held that New Jersey Transit is not an extension of the state of New Jersey and therefore does not share the state’s immunity from lawsuits.

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..