The Supreme Court on Monday morning sent the case of a Mississippi man convicted of abusing his daughter back to the state courts for another look. It also reversed, without briefing on the merits or oral argument, a ruling by a federal appeals court in favor of a Maryland man convicted of second-degree murder. The brief, unsigned opinions in Pitts v. Mississippi and Clark v. Sweeney came as part of a list of orders from the justices’ private conference on Friday, Nov. 21. 

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Every year, students across the country learn the bedrock principle that under the Constitution the federal government is one of limited powers. Less often taught is that the Supreme Court has long rejected this founding ideal when it comes to Native Americans and people in U.S. territories. Instead, a principle known as the court’s “plenary power doctrine” gives Congress near-unlimited power to govern these communities as it sees fit – all without any firm grounding in the Constitution itself. Indeed, under the plenary power doctrine, Congress could go so far as to unilaterally dissolve a tribe or dismiss a territory’s local elected government and install (or re-install) authoritarian military rule, for any reason or no reason at all.

Texas came to the Supreme Court on Friday, asking the justices to clear the way for it to use a new congressional map intended to increase the chances that Republicans can retain control of the U.S. House of Representatives. On Tuesday, by a vote of 2-1, a three-judge district court in Texas barred the state from using the map in the 2026 elections, concluding that the map unconstitutionally sorts voters based on race. Texas Solicitor General William Peterson urged the court to pause that ruling, telling it that “[t]he confusion sown by the district court’s eleventh-hour injunction poses a very real risk of preventing candidates from being placed on the ballot and may well call into question the integrity of the upcoming election.”

Peterson asked the justices to put the three-judge district court’s ruling on hold by Dec. 1; he also asked the court to issue an order, known as an administrative stay, that would temporarily pause the ruling to give the justices time to consider the state’s request. In an order distributed shortly after 7:30 p.m. EST on Friday night, Justice Samuel Alito – who fields emergency requests from the 5th Circuit, which includes Texas – granted the administrative stay and instructed the challengers to file their response by 5 p.m. EST on Monday, Nov. 24.

Nuts and Bolts is a recurring series by Stephen Wermiel providing insights into the mechanics of how the Supreme Court works.

Washington is well-known for its acronyms, and the Supreme Court is no exception. One example that usually signifies that something went awry at the court is the “DIG.” It stands for the procedure by which a case is “dismissed as improvidently granted.” While that may sound dry, such dismissals can be of considerable significance.  

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

The Constitution’s first 10 Amendments (the Bill of Rights) list a number of criminal procedure guarantees (because the 1790 Framers, criminals all in the eyes of their former government, were unhappy with their treatment by the British). Among these is a right to be criminally accused by a grand jury. Specifically, the Fifth Amendment begins with an affirmation that “[n]o person” can be charged with any “infamous” crime unless by “presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury.” Yet today, over half the states make the use of a grand jury optional, and states such as Connecticut and Pennsylvania have abolished their use altogether. A careful exploration of how and why this is true requires more words than usual, so please bear with me and consider this a “double issue.”