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

Please note that the views of outside contributors do not reflect the official opinions of SCOTUSblog or its staff.

For centuries, a doctrine known as the rule of lenity served a vital function in American criminal law. According to this rule, when a criminal statute is unclear about what conduct it means to punish, courts should resolve that uncertainty in favor of the defendant. Lenity was not your average canon of construction. It was a constitutional safeguard, rooted in principles of fair notice and the separation of powers. At its core, the rule of lenity was designed to prevent judges from expanding criminal liability beyond what the legislature had clearly prescribed.

Each holiday season, as peppermint mochas return to coffee shop menus and mall Santas take their posts, a familiar kind of religious freedom conflict appears in the news: disputes over nativity scenes. Specifically, communities across the country have battled and are battling over whether depictions of the biblical story of Jesus Christ’s birth belong in seasonal displays on public land.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday left in place a ruling by a federal judge in Chicago that bars the Trump administration from deploying National Guard troops in Illinois. In a three-page unsigned order, the justices turned down the government’s request to put the temporary restraining order issued by U.S. District Judge April Perry on Oct. 9 on hold while litigation continues in the lower courts. “At this preliminary stage,” the court said, “the Government has failed to identify a source of authority that would allow the military to execute the laws in Illinois.” It was the second loss for the Trump administration before the court in only four days. 

The Relist Watch column examines cert petitions that the Supreme Court has “relisted” for its upcoming conference. A short explanation of relists is available here.

The Supreme Court continues to churn through relisted cases at a brisk clip as it works to fill out the rest of this term’s argument calendar ahead of its mid-January deadline.

That churn has already produced both winners and losers. The biggest winner was Terry Pitchford, who has been sitting on death row for years for his role as an accessory to a killing during a botched robbery; after seven relists, the court granted review to hear argument stemming from his claims that the prosecutor impermissibly considered race in striking potential jurors. Another beneficiary is Samuel Fields, also on death row, who persuaded the Supreme Court to entertain his seriously belated rehearing petition arguing that he was entitled to relief under clearly established law. The court will now consider the merits of his rehearing petition at their first January conference.

Cases and Controversies is a recurring series by Carolyn Shapiro, primarily focusing on the effects of the Supreme Court’s rulings, opinions, and procedures on the law, on other institutions, and on our constitutional democracy more generally.

Please note that the views of outside contributors do not reflect the official opinions of SCOTUSblog or its staff.

Their names do not appear in the caption of Prigg v. Pennsylvania, but Margaret and Jerry Morgan were at the center of the case. In 1837, the Morgans lived with their children in York County, Pennsylvania. Jerry was a free Black man, and Margaret had always lived as a free Black woman both in Maryland, the slave state where she was born, and in Pennsylvania, a free state, where she later moved with Jerry.