Two Would-Be Supreme Court Justices and Me

How Do You Cope When Two of Your High School Newspaper Friends Show Up on the Short Lists for the Nation’s Highest Court?

The stakes of the presidential election are huge and global. The results may determine the future of public health, the republic, even the planet.

The stakes of the presidential election are also peculiar and personal, especially for me. The results may determine which of two old friends—my fellow editors on our high school newspaper—ends up being the next Californian on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Mine is a strange circumstance. I spent my high school years, 1988 through 1991, at Polytechnic, a small (my graduating class had just 85 students) and academically …

by Joe Mathews | October 27, 2020

The Supreme Court Gets Ready to Remake America, But How?

Legal Scholars Foresee Corporations and Criminal Defendants Gaining Protections, While Reproductive Rights and Affirmative Action Wither

by Joe Mathews | December 19, 2018

The United States Supreme Court could use the power it has over American life to identify new protections for criminal defendants and for people whose privacy has been invaded by …

The 1919 Murder Case That Gave Americans the Right to Remain Silent

Decades Before the Supreme Court's Miranda Decision, a Washington Triple Slaying Paved the Way to Protect Criminal Suspects

By Scott D. Seligman | April 30, 2018

If you’ve ever watched an American television crime drama, you probably can recite a suspect’s rights along with the arresting officers. Those requirements—that prisoners must be informed that they may …

The Chief Justice Who Elevated the Supreme Court Into a Co-Equal Branch of Government

Before John Marshall, the Court Had Been a Constitutional Afterthought

By Joel Richard Paul | March 19, 2018

No one in the founding generation left a more lasting imprint on American government and law than Chief Justice John Marshall.

We remember Washington’s leadership, Jefferson’s eloquence, and Franklin’s wit, …

The Supreme Court Ruled Wrong, Then Right, on Japanese American Internment

The Only "Precedent” for the Proposed Muslim Registry Is Conflicted Legal Thinking

By Julian Lim | January 18, 2017

In 2014, a group of law students at the University of Hawaii asked Justice Antonin Scalia to comment on the Korematsu case, the infamous 1944 Supreme Court decision that upheld …

Make the Supreme Court’s 4-4 Split Permanent

An Equal Number of Conservative and Liberal Justices Would Promote Compromise, Not Stalemate

By David Orentlicher | June 24, 2016

Since the death of Justice Antonin Scalia earlier this year, the U.S. has obsessed over how and when to fill his sizable void on the Supreme Court. Much is at …

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