* Maduro's legal team anchored by Julian Assange's lawyer. [ NY Law Journal] * Meanwhile, the DOJ just dropped its claims that Maduro ran the "Cartel de los Soles" after acknowledging that it's not even a real group. Exactly the sort of airtight prosecution you'd expect to see before killing 40-80 people to make an arrest. [ NY Times] * Chamber of Commerce will get an expedited appeal on challenge to Trump's $100,000 H-1B visa fee. [ Law360]
There were a lot of decisions in 2025 that immiserated huge amounts of people and made the world materially worse. But my pick is not one of those. Instead, I need to talk about NIH v. American Public Health Association. Yes, it has to do with slashing research grants, which does materially harm a lot of people. But more profoundly for me, this case is emblematic of every single level of destruction and mayhem coming out of the Supreme Court-all the arrogance bundled into one.
During his first year back in office, President Donald Trump amassed an unprecedented amount of power in pursuit of his far-reaching agenda. His quests to crush the Democratic Party's electoral power, seize control over the economy, and deport millions of immigrants were all actively abetted by the Supreme Court's Republican-appointed justices. Time and again-often over the shadow docket, with no explanation-the 6-3 supermajority cleared the path for Trump's aggressive executive overreach.
I can't stop listening to: Marvin Gaye, " Purple Snowflakes ." With all respect to " Christmas Eve in Washington ," this lightly lysergic soul tune is my favorite holiday song by a local artist. Motown shelved the original version and got Gaye to rerecord it as " Pretty Little Baby ," a frankly suboptimal state of affairs that persisted until 1993, when the original recording appeared on a compilation .
To call the Guard into active federal service under 12406(3), the President must be unable' with the regular military to execute the laws of the United States.' Because the statute requires an assessment of the military's ability to execute the laws, it likely applies only where the military could legally execute the laws. Such circumstances are exceptional: Under the Posse Comitatus Act, the military is prohibited from execut[ing] the laws' except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress.
The justices of the US supreme court even its conservatives have traditionally valued their institution's own standing. John Roberts, the current US chief justice, has always been praised even by liberals as a staunch advocate of the court's image as a neutral arbiter. For decades, Americans believed the court soared above the fray of partisan contestation. No more. In Donald Trump's second term, the supreme court's conservative supermajority has seized the opportunity to empower the nation's chief executive.
Discussions of race are everywhere and nowhere in 2025. On one hand, President Donald Trump is openly insulting Somali immigrants, describing entire nations as "shithole" countries, and insisting that the most persecuted class of humans are white South Africans. On the other, none of this is actually registering as anything other than Trump being Trump, and so when the Supreme Court agrees to revisit a foundational doctrine like birthright citizenship, too many of us shrug it off.
Courts play an important role in authoritarian regimes. They legitimize the actions of despots by declaring them "legal" or "constitutional." They ensure institutional compliance with the regime's rules. And they make politically unpopular decisions that align with the authoritarian's goals while giving the authoritarian political distance from those goals. Quite simply, you can't instigate a strongman takeover of a constitutional democracy without having a robust judicial power that's willing to play along.
MSN Pharmaceuticals, Inc. subsequently filed a petition for certiorari to the Supreme Court in August of this year, arguing that there is "doctrinal chaos" surrounding the topic of after-arising technology in the context of patent infringement suits. While some Federal Circuit decisions have held "that when a patentee secures a claim construction that ensnares, as infringing, an accused device that features after-arising technology, the patentee risks invalidating its own patent on written-description and enablement grounds,"
discuss what will happen as the Supreme Court considers whether a president can remove leaders of independent agencies without cause, how the overt signals about immigration and "erasure" in the new National Security Strategy are meant to stir up cultural anxiety in Europe, and the high-stakes merger drama between Netflix, Paramount, and Warner Bros. with guest Tim Wu, professor at Columbia Law School and author of the new book The Age of Extraction: How Tech Platforms Conquered the Economy and Threaten Our Future Prosperity.
It is hard to imagine a worse decision than the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling last week allowing Texas to use its new congressional maps designed to elect five more Republicans to the House of Representatives. In a 6-3 decision, the six conservative justices have opened the door to states being able to adopt unconstitutional laws on voting with immunity from judicial review for at least one election.
NEW YORK -- After a yearslong legal battle, U.S. prosecutors told the Supreme Court on Tuesday that they want to give up their fight to preserve the convictions of a former Fox executive and a South American sports media company in a corruption case related to TV rights for international soccer tournaments. Hernan Lopez, ex-CEO of Fox International Channels, and Full Play Group SA were convicted in 2023 after a trial in New York but subsequently granted an acquittal by a judge.