SCOTUStoday for Friday, December 5

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As we’ve previously noted, we read a lot of legal news as we prepare this newsletter each day. Here’s the most memorable headline we saw this week: How the bar exam failed Kim Kardashian.

Week in Review

The December sitting is already halfway over. Here are the links to SCOTUSblog’s coverage of the cases that have been heard so far:

SCOTUS Quick Hits

  • On Thursday, the Supreme Court announced that it will allow Texas to use its new congressional map in the 2026 elections. The map had been put on hold by a lower court, which said it unconstitutionally sorted voters based on race. Justice Elena Kagan wrote a dissenting opinion, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
  • The court could issue its decision in the interim docket case on President Donald Trump’s effort to deploy the National Guard to Illinois at any time.
  • Today, the justices will take part in a private conference to discuss cases and vote on petitions for review. The court may announce it has agreed to hear the birthright citizenship cases as soon as this afternoon, and an order list is expected on Monday at 9:30 a.m. EST.
  • Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is set to be the keynote speaker at the National Council for the Social Studies’ conference this weekend in Washington, D.C.
  • On Monday, SCOTUSblog will be hosting a live blog during the oral argument in Trump v. Slaughter. The live blog will begin at 9:30 a.m. EST.

Morning Reads

  • New documentary follows ‘rising star’ as he takes his case to the Supreme Court (Mark Walsh, ABA Journal)(Paywall) — Producers at Bloomberg Law “were looking to do something different” when they pursued a documentary about what it’s like to work on a Supreme Court case, according to ABA Journal. “I think a lot of documentaries about the Supreme Court usually focus on an issue or a person,” Andrew Satter, the film’s director, said at a Dec. 1 panel discussion after a premiere screening of “Supreme Advocacy” in Washington, D.C. “We really wanted to tell a story about the process, about how this works.” The 40-minute film follows “Roman Martinez, a rising star among elite Supreme Court advocates, and a case he took to the court last year involving disability discrimination.”
  • New York Times sues Pentagon over new press policy (Ryan Knappenberger, Courthouse News Service) — The New York Times on Thursday sued the Department of Defense “over its new press policy that bars journalists from obtaining any information not explicitly approved for release by Pentagon officials,” contending that the policy “violates its First Amendment rights, its Fifth Amendment due process rights and binding D.C. Circuit precedent,” according to Courthouse News Service. “The Times pointed to the Supreme Court’s 1980 decision in Richmond Newspapers Inc. v. Virginia, in which the high court ruled 7-1 that the First Amendment guarantees a ‘right to gather information,’ because otherwise the ‘freedom of the press could be eviscerated.’”
  • States Urge Supreme Court to Review Nuclear Fuel Storage Case (Shayna Greene, Bloomberg Law)(Paywall) — In a friend-of-the-court brief filed on Thursday, a group of states urged the court to grant review in a case “regarding a Nuclear Regulatory Commission license to temporarily store nuclear waste, arguing the outcome will affect states that want to have a say in where it’s stored,” according to Bloomberg Law. New Mexico, Michigan, and Utah wrote that the lower court decision deprives a potential host state, like themselves, “of bargaining chips it might have held in petitioning Congress for changes” to the law governing nuclear waste storage.
  • The Supreme Court Should Hear Case Seeking to Overturn Gonzales v. Raich (Ilya Somin, The Volokh Conspiracy, Reason) — In a post for Reason’s Volokh Conspiracy blog, Ilya Somin urged the Supreme Court to take up Canna Provisions, Inc. v. Bondi and “overrule its terrible decision in Gonzales v. Raich (2005), which held that Congress’ power to ‘regulate commerce…among the several states’ gives it the authority to forbid the possession and distribution of medical marijuana that had never crossed state lines or even been sold in any market within a state.” Somin noted that the “petition was filed by Boise Schiller Flexner, a prominent appellate firm, and the lead counsel is ‘superlawyer’ David Boies.”
  • Ghislaine Maxwell will plea for prison release, new court filing says (Terry Collins, USA Today) — In October, the Supreme Court announced that it would not hear an appeal from longtime Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell. But this week, Maxwell made it clear that she is not done fighting for her release when she filed notice of her intent to file a habeas corpus petition with a U.S. district judge, according to USA Today. “The court filing also states that Maxwell plans to file her petition ‘pro se,’ meaning she would represent herself and pursue her early release without the help of a lawyer.”

A Closer Look: The Sad Story of Samuel Chase

This is the third in our series covering some of the court’s most notable justices.

Sometimes, it’s good to be the only one. Take Justice Byron White, the only justice inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. Or Justice James Wilson, the only justice to sign both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Or Justice William Taft, the only person to serve both as president and chief justice. But then there’s, well, Justice Samuel Chase, the only justice to have been impeached in our nation’s history. 

Not to be confused with Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, who would be appointed to the Supreme Court 68 years later by President Abraham Lincoln, Samuel Chase served as an associate justice from 1796 to 1811.

Having served in the Maryland General Assembly for 20 years, beginning in 1765, Chase gained a reputation for his opposition to British policies concerning the colonies. In particular, he participated in protests against the Stamp Act, which included burning effigies of stamp collectors.

Chase represented Maryland at the First Continental Congress in 1774 and the Second in 1775, signing the Declaration of Independence in 1776. During the Revolutionary War, he (unsuccessfully) attempted to persuade Canada to join the American cause. After the war, Chase faced financial difficulties and was involved in a 1778 scandal over using insider knowledge to speculate in flour, though he was eventually cleared. Chase relocated to Baltimore in 1786, rebuilding his law practice and serving as a judge. Initially an Anti-Federalist who opposed ratifying the Constitution for lacking a Bill of Rights, Chase later aligned with the Federalists. In 1791, he was appointed judge of the general court of Maryland while also serving on the state’s criminal court.

In 1796, President George Washington nominated Chase to the Supreme Court, where he held the difficult duty of circuit riding (this involved traveling vast distances to hear cases in lower courts, in a time when travel was considerably less enjoyable than today). On the bench, Chase authored several key opinions, such as the 1796 case of Ware v. Hylton, affirming the supremacy of federal treaties over state laws (though not the Constitution), and the 1798 case of Calder v. Bull, discussing the natural law’s limits on legislative power. However, his strong Federalist views led to controversy, particularly in Chase’s enforcement of the Alien and Sedition Acts.

Chase was impeached in 1804 in the House of Representatives by Democratic-Republican allies of President Thomas Jefferson, charged with eight articles over his handling of certain trials before him. Specifically, the justice supposedly refused to dismiss biased jurors, limited defense witnesses, preemptively ruled on treason law, and used grand jury charges to rail against his ideological opponents. Nevertheless, Chase’s Senate trial ended in acquittal; his opponents fell shy of the two-thirds vote necessary to remove him when a bloc of Federalists and several Democratic-Republicans refused to do so.

Following his acquittal, Chase continued serving on the Supreme Court, although his participation diminished due to declining health, including severe gout that often kept him from sessions. He died in Baltimore in 1811, leaving a complicated legacy of judicial independence but perhaps rather poor judgment.

SCOTUS Quote

“Which of the following is not like the others: (a) a monument, (b) an antiquity (defined as a ‘relic or monument of ancient times,’ … or (c) 5,000 square miles of land beneath the ocean? If you answered (c), you are not only correct but also a speaker of ordinary English.”

— Chief Justice John Roberts, respecting the denial of cert in Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association v. Raimondo

On Site

From Amy Howe

Court Allows Texas to Use Redistricting Map Challenged as Racially Discriminatory

The Supreme Court on Thursday gave the green light to Texas’ efforts to be able to use a new congressional map favorable to Republicans in the 2026 elections despite a lower court’s ruling that the map unconstitutionally sorts voters based on race. In a brief, unsigned opinion, a majority of the court granted the state’s request to pause the ruling issued earlier this month by a three-judge district court in El Paso. For more on the case, including the dissent from the court’s three Democratic-appointed justices, read Amy’s analysis.

Case Preview

Amy Howe on National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission

Nearly a quarter-century ago, the Supreme Court rejected a challenge in Federal Election Commission v. Colorado Federal Republican Campaign Committee to the constitutionality of limits on the amount of money that political parties can spend in coordination with a candidate for office. On Tuesday, Dec. 9, the justices will hear oral arguments in a case that asks them to strike down the coordinated party expenditure limits and, if necessary, overrule that 2001 decision. For a deeper look at National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission, read Amy’s case preview.

Relist Watch

Relistpalooza: Fifty New Relists, Six Big Fights

In his latest Relist Watch column, John Elwood summarized the six issues raised by the 50 new relists that will be in front of the justices during today’s conference. They are birthright citizenship; the Second Amendment rights of convicted felons; parental rights; criminal venue and limitations; the Federal Arbitration Act; and the Rooker-Feldman doctrine.

Contributor Corner

Government’s Position in Asylum Case Could Incentivize Unauthorized Migration

In his latest Immigration Matters column, César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández analyzed Noem v. Al Otro Lado, a case on whether asylum seekers who have not been allowed to cross the border into the United States are still eligible to apply for asylum under the Immigration and Nationality Act. If the government succeeds in securing a ruling that says such asylum seekers are not eligible, it may unintentionally incentivize unauthorized migration, “the very opposite outcome of what the government claims that it seeks to achieve,” Hernández noted.

The post SCOTUStoday for Friday, December 5 appeared first on SCOTUSblog.



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