Law360's The Term - News & Analysis on the Supreme Court

On this week’s episode of The Term, we break down all the blockbuster decisions handed down Thursday by the Supreme Court, where the Affordable Care Act survived another GOP challenge, Nestle and Cargill defeated claims of aiding child slavery on cocoa farms and the court sided with a Catholic foster agency with a policy of refusing to certify same-sex parents.

The Term team is still waiting for a flood of opinions expected to drop by the end of the month, but that doesn’t mean we had a slow week at the high court. This week we discuss a new case taken up over government surveillance, an unsuccessful challenge to the male-only draft and a major immigration ruling dashing the hopes of many immigrants with "temporary protected status" of obtaining green cards.

A cop who took $5,000 to look up a stripper's license plate information may have broken department protocol and the public trust, but he did not violate federal computer crime law, according to a majority opinion handed down by the Supreme Court on Thursday. On this week’s episode of The Term we explore the closely-watched ruling, plus look at a corporate giant’s failed bid to escape a $2.1 billion product liability judgment.

The Supreme Court handed down rulings affecting immigrants, Superfund pollution sites and more this week as it works to clear its docket of argued cases before summer recess. Law360's The Term recaps all the latest developments, including a prisoner's failed attempt to be executed by firing squad rather than lethal injection that he says will cause severe pain.

The U.S. Supreme Court took an extraordinary step this week when it agreed to hear a closely watched abortion case that many observers speculate could mean the end of Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision that has protected abortion rights for half a century. On this week’s episode of The Term, we unpack how the case landed on court’s docket and which justices are the most likely targets of advocates when this blockbuster case is argued next year. Also this week: An opinion from Monday that limited the reach of last term’s ruling that convictions by non-unanimous juries are unconstitutional; and a breakdown of some interesting data from the most recent oral argument season.

In light of a slow news week at the Supreme Court, we take the opportunity on this week’s episode of The Term to welcome guests Vernon Burton and Armand Derfner, the co-authors of a forthcoming book examining the high court’s long, fraught history with race, from the first days of the Republic to the modern day Roberts Court.

The Supreme Court heard its final oral argument of the term this week in a criminal case involving sentencing relief for crack offenders that saw some tough questions for the Biden administration. Law360's The Term dives into the case, then looks ahead to some of the biggest decisions that are expected to come by the end of June.

The case of a high school cheerleader whose profanity-laced Snapchat led to a suspension landed in front of the Supreme Court this week, where the justices struggled to balance punishment for disruptive online speech while avoiding all-out censorship and student expression. On this week’s episode of The Term we break down the oral argument, as well as a potential landmark gun rights case the high court added to its docket, and a “textualist showdown” that played out in an opinion handed down on Thursday involving federal immigration law.

With the stroke of a pen, the Supreme Court on Thursday nixed a legal strategy that the Federal Trade Commission used for many years to return billions of dollars to consumers. Law360's The Term breaks down the ruling—along with a big defeat for juvenile justice reformers and Justice Amy Coney Barrett's eye-popping book deal.

Long a political non-starter, the idea of "court-packing" is now dominating Washington as Democrats in Congress push legislation to add four seats to the Supreme Court and a presidential commission studies the broader issue of court reform. Will these latest efforts go anywhere? Law360's The Term discusses on this week's episode.