The ethnic milestones and makeup of the Supreme Court have long been topics of fascination, from the notion of a “Jewish seat” filled by those who followed Justice Louis Brandeis as the first Jewish justice in 1916 to the recognition that Justice Antonin Scalia received as the first Italian American on the court in 1986 to Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s embrace of her role since 2009 as the first Latina to serve. Less attention has been paid to the court’s considerable Irish connections.

ScotusCrim is a recurring series by Rory Little focusing on intersections between the Supreme Court and criminal law.

The Supreme Court has only eight cases scheduled for oral argument over two weeks this December. (You can listen to their oral arguments live, here.) Two civil cases will attract much media attention: Trump v. Slaughter (addressing the executive, legislative, and judicial branch powers to regulate the removal or reinstatement of federal officials) and NRSC v. FEC (are monetary political campaign limits on “coordinated party expenditures” constitutional?). But as is often the case, a significant portion of the December docket is comprised of arguments related to criminal law. Of those four cases, Hamm v. Smith, a death penalty case, is likely to attract the most public attention – but Urias-Orellana v. Bondi, largely unnoticed by the popular media, will affect far more cases in our legal system.

Updated on Dec. 2 at 9:20 a.m.

I’ve never been a fan of the lottery. 

In fourth grade, I pooled together my chore money (a grand total of $6), handed it over to my dad, and started coming up with names for the horse I’d buy with my winnings. Of course (and thankfully for my parents, who had no interest in caring for a 900-lb horse in addition to two kids), this didn’t work out. I later learned about my dismal odds from a National Geographic Kids magazine: I was thousands of times more likely to be struck by lightning than win the Powerball. 

So, naturally, I was skeptical when Zach, SCOTUSblog’s executive editor, asked me to enter into and write a story on the Supreme Court’s lottery system, which allows members of the public to apply online to receive tickets to oral argument. After all was said and done, I expected to write up a few paragraphs effectively saying that I gave it a go, got denied, and that was that. Thirty-three days after entering my name into the Supreme Court’s surprisingly easy-to-use online lottery system, however, I was walking from the metro at Union Station to the Supreme Court for my first live oral argument. Like the lottery system, it also turned out a bit differently from what I was expecting. 

The Supreme Court will hear arguments on Tuesday, Dec. 2, in a case brought by First Choice Women’s Resource Centers, a group of faith-based pregnancy centers that the New Jersey attorney general’s office alleges may have misled women about whether it provides certain reproductive-health services.  The question before the court is a somewhat technical one: Whether a federal court has the authority to rule on First Choice’s claim that New Jersey’s demand for information about the group’s fundraising practices discouraged it from exercising its First Amendment rights, or whether the group must instead litigate that claim in state proceedings. 

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.

In a recent investigative report, New York Times journalist Jodi Kantor revealed that there is growing friction among the Supreme Court’s three liberal justices. Specifically, her article describes a widening rift over how the liberal justices believe they should operate on a 6-3 conservative court. As Kantor tells it, Justice Elena Kagan favors restraint and internal diplomacy. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, on the other hand, has embraced sharper dissents and public-facing critiques of the court. Justice Sonia Sotomayor sits between them, balancing alarm with a commitment to maintaining working relationships with her conservative colleagues. With this term shaping up to be yet another consequential one for our foundational understanding of democracy, constitutional structure, and civil rights, Kantor’s reporting paints a picture of the liberal justices at odds over how best to use their voices in a moment defined by dissent.