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.
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.
Texas can use its new, GOP-friendly congressional map while a legal challenge plays out, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, temporarily pausing a lower court ruling that had blocked the map from going into effect. With the Dec. 8 candidate filing deadline fast approaching, the high court's decision likely means Texas' new map will be used for the 2026 midterm elections.
The dairy industry sought a deal with President Richard Nixon to write a huge campaign check to his reelection campaign-in exchange for price supports that would artificially raise the cost of milk. But federal law strictly limited the amount it could donate. So Nixon's henchmen devised a workaround: Dairy companies would funnel $2 million through various Republican Party committees, which could then transfer the cash to Nixon's campaign.
Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an order deferring a decision in Trump v. Perlmutter, a case in which President Donald Trump is asking the Court to stay an interlocutory injunction issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in September restoring Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter to her post pending her lawsuit against Trump for removing her from office.
Some justices were skeptical of arguments that ISPs should have no legal obligation under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to terminate an account when a user's IP address has been repeatedly flagged for downloading pirated music. But justices also seemed hesitant to rule in favor of record labels, with some of the debate focusing on how ISPs should handle large accounts like universities where there could be tens of thousands of users.
As the tumultuous first year of Donald Trump's second term as president approaches its end, it's difficult to assess his successes and his failures. For one thing, his governing strategy has been all but unprecedented. Most presidents who have just won an election are forced to choose whether they want to cash in their political chips to get big things done or build up political capital for future elections.
In its sweeping Trump v. Wilcox decision in May, the Court ruled that the president "may remove without cause" officials in administrative agencies-a decision grounded in the Court's ringing endorsement of the so-called unitary executive. An elementary application of the unitary-executive theory would allow the White House to interfere, unchecked, with the Fed-just as the Court has empowered Trump to gut every other federal agency.
