Supreme Court

In recent decades, much progress has been made in diversifying the Supreme Court. While only white males served as justices for more than 175 years, the court now includes three female justices, one Black and one Latina justice. Despite the increased diversity, however, the court’s voting rules often exclude minority viewpoints. Like most other courts, the Supreme Court decides its cases by a majority vote. If at least five of the nine justices agree on a resolution, they are able to determine the court’s decision and impose their preferred outcome. If other justices disagree, they cannot ensure that their views are taken...

A group of unvaccinated Maine health care workers are asking the Supreme Court to block a state rule that mandates certain health care facilities require their employees to be fully vaccinated, arguing that the requirement violates their religious liberty rights. So far, the justices have declined invitations to strike down...

AMARILLO, Texas (KAMR/KCIT) – Texas District 13 Representative Ronny Jackson joined an amicus brief submitted to the Supreme Court in support of Coach Joe Kennedy in the in-progress Kennedy v. Bemerton School District case, asking the Court to hear and agree with a coach’s claim that he was fired for silently kneeling and praying after his high school’s football games.

The U.S. Supreme Court will take up procedural challenges to Texas' controversial abortion law on November 1. The conservative majority has decided to allow the law, banning most abortions after about six weeks, to remain in place while legal proceedings are underway. CBS News political reporter Melissa Quinn joins CBSN's Elaine Quijano with details.

Daniel Hemel is a professor at the University of Chicago Law School and a visiting professor at New York University School of Law. Senate Democrats and the Biden administration are reportedly nearing a deal on a new “billionaire tax” to pay for the package of spending programs that is stalled in Congress. The tax — which would apply annually to the increase in the value of stocks and other assets held by taxpayers with a net worth of $1 billion or more — appears to be one of the few revenue-raising measures that Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), a key swing vote, is willing to countenance. But there is a potentially fatal flaw in the proposal that should cause progressives to view it as a Trojan horse: The current Supreme Court is quite likely to strike it down as unconstitutional.

NEW DELHI — India’s Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered an independent probe into reports that phone numbers belonging to journalists, activists and political figures in India were found on a list that included some numbers selected for surveillance by clients of the Israeli surveillance firm NSO Group. The Pegasus Project,...

The nation today has a surfeit of indignation, but wholesome exasperation — brisk impatience with foolishness — is always in short supply. Hence the exhilaration one experiences reading Judge Edith Jones’s dissent, 16 months ago, on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, concerning a case the Supreme Court will hear next Tuesday. If Jones’s argument was right, David Wilson’s case should not have reached the Supreme Court and his argument should not prevail there.

For nearly all its history, the Supreme Court kept its distance from gun policy. Now it’s about to decide a case that could radically reduce the government’s power to regulate guns. The Second Amendment states explicitly that it exists to protect “a well regulated Militia,” and until fairly recently, the...

India’s top court on Wednesday appointed an independent committee to probe the allegations that prime minister Narendra Modi’s government used the Israeli military-grade spyware Pegasus to snoop on sitting members of Parliament, judges, journalists, and activists.The Supreme Court order came in response to multiple petitions filed by journalists, rights activists and opposition politicians who sought an investigation into accusations of illegal surveillance by the government.The court slammed the Modi government on Wednesday for using national security as an excuse to not divulge information, and also declined the government’s request to set up a panel of experts, saying it would...

The Supreme Court's reputation has been sullied by deeply contentious confirmation processes and the resulting polarizing rulings by its own justices. One would hope that the commission convened by President Joe Biden would at least acknowledge that this is a problem significant enough to warrant consideration of some transformative reform. But if the commission's first public deliberations Oct. 15 are any indication of the trajectory of this group, it has a ways to go before even agreeing on this fundamental premise.

The U.S. Supreme Court raised the stakes in the politically explosive fight over reproductive rights by agreeing to hear arguments on Nov. 1 on a Texas law that has largely shut down legal abortion in the state. The court won't directly decide if the law -- which bans almost all abortions after six weeks of pregnancy -- violates Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that legalized the procedure nationwide. Nor will the justices be addressing whether to overturn its abortion-rights precedents; that's an issue they will consider in a separate case on Dec. 1. But the decision to intervene in the Texas case -- and hear arguments on a highly expedited schedule -- reshapes the multifaceted legal fight. The outcome could hint at the fate of abortion rights nationwide.

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Monday in two cases challenging a Texas law that prohibits abortions after the sixth week of pregnancy. The stakes in these cases are great not only for the future of Roe v. Wade but also for the ability of states to violate the U.S. Constitution.

Next Friday, the United States Supreme Court is scheduled to meet to consider whether to hear appeals from two libel cases in which the plaintiffs seek to persuade the justices to reconsider the single greatest First Amendment victory for the press in American history. Two of the court’s justices, Clarence...