The Latest Breaking News from Kavanaugh

SCOTUS nudges the lower courts and parties into compliance.

Let's move on to other variants. One looks at whether a law has any exceptions at all, and, if religious reasons are not among those exceptions, automatically applies strict scrutiny. It was proposed by Justice Kavanaugh in his dissent in Calvary Chapel Dayton Valley v. Sisolak, and possibly embraced by…

As (yet another) Texas v. U.S. slides from the shadow docket to the rocket docket

Justice Gorsuch embraces Worcester v. Georgia, while Justice Kavanaugh rejects the great Chief Justice.

In Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta, the majority and dissent vigorously disagreed about the scope and meaning of federal Indian law. In particular, Justices Kavanaugh and Gorsuch contested how certain precedents, construed over the course of two centuries, should be read. Indeed, the majority and dissent bickered about what those cases actually…

Becerra v. Empire Health Foundation presents an exceedingly intricate case about Medicare funding. I won't even try to explain the facts. In dissent, Justice Kavanaugh said the statutory formula is "mind-numbingly complex." Justice Kagan, for the majority, joked "you might be ready to absorb the relevant statutory language (but don't…

During the October 2021 Term, each Justices authored between five and eight majority opinions. The Chief assigned himself the most majority opinions (8) and Justice Kavanaugh had the fewest (5). Justice Kavanaugh wrote the most concurring opinions with 8. Indeed, Kavanaugh beat Thomas and Alito, who each had 7. Five…

Assume for now that Dobbs takes off the table the question of whether the 14th Amendment protects a right to abortion. What are the major legal questions about abortion likely to arise in the federal courts going forward? I've been trying to come up with a list of the major…

On June 18, 2021, I wrote, "We don't have a 6-3 Conservative Court. We have a 3-3-3 Court." I'm not sure if I was the first person to coin the phrase 3-3-3 Court, but I was one of the first. And I elaborated on this theme in a Newsweek column,…