Amazing new resource for anyone trying to follow changes on state supreme courts.
Every cycle, around 20% of the seats on state high courts are up for election, and @taniel.bsky.social writes up every one of this year's races.
While federal laws and the U.S. Constitution's Supremacy Clause place constraints on what property-related tools states and localities can use to push back on ICE actions, this report explains that they still have some avenues for ensuring the federal government and its contractors do not overreach.
This is a must-read account of shadow docket deliberations. Note Roberts' push to halt an Obama-era policy b/c it would generate "substantial and irreversible reordering of the domestic power sector." Yet SCOTUS has greenlit far more disruptive Trump-era policies. /1 www.nytimes.com/2026/04/18/u...
Very big news: Minnesota prosecutors just charged a federal immigration agent with assault. It's not easy to bring state prosecutions against federal officers, but the law is clear that there's no absolute immunity from state prosecution. /1 statecourtreport.org/our-work/ana...
A big ruling from the Kentucky Supreme Court blocking impeachment proceedings against a state judge. Disagreement with a court ruling is not an impeachable offense and violates separation of powers under the state constitution, the court ruled. kentuckylantern.com/2026/04/06/k...
Last week, the PA Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling barring mandatory life in prison without parole for felony murder convictions. Prof Martha Davis digs into the case and critiques a concurrence that argues courts shouldn't look to international law. statecourtreport.org/our-work/ana...
Check out @jessewegman.bsky.social’s new newsletter on SCOTUS! Check out the below, and subscribe here: majorquestions.substack.com
CHIEF JUSTICE TODD OPINION No. 3 WAP 2024 Appeal from the Order of the Superior Court entered June 13, 2023, at No. 1008 WDA 2021, Affirming the Order of the Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County entered December 19, 2016, at No. CP-02-CR-0016878-2014. : : : : : : : : : : : ARGUED: October 8, 2024 DECIDED: MARCH 26, 2026 In this appeal by allowance, we granted allocatur to consider whether a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for a felony murder conviction violates the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution or Article I, Section 13 of the Pennsylvania Constitution.1 For the reasons that follow, we determine that a mandatory life without parole sentence for all felony murder convictions, absent an assessment of culpability, is inconsistent with the protections bestowed upon our citizens
under the “cruel punishments” clause of our Commonwealth’s organic charter.2 Thus, we reverse the order of the Superior Court, vacate Appellant’s judgment of sentence, and remand for resentencing. However, as we have done under similar circumstances, we stay our order for 120 days to provide a reasonable amount of time for the General Assembly to consider remedial measures.
BREAKING: The PA Supreme Court holds that mandatory life without parole sentences for all "felony murder" convictions -- a sentence more than 1,000 people in PA are serving -- violates the state constitution's "cruel" punishment ban. This is GROUNDBREAKING: www.pacourts.us/assets/opini...
Wow wow wow.
Pa Supreme Court just ruled that mandatory life without parole for second-degree murder is unconstitutional.
I'm excited to share a new resource on SCOTUS from @brennancenter.org's Kohlberg Ctr. The Benchmark is a new hub dedicated to how SCOTUS is functioning as an institution & how it can be reformed. We'll have commentary, explainers, trackers, polling & more. /1 www.brennancenter.org/our-work/ana...
Happening today!!
Don't miss this virtual event on state supreme court clerkships, where you can hear directly from justices about what it's like to clerk and what they're looking for in applications. Thursday, March 19 at 3pm ET. Register below! www.brennancenter.org/events/what-...
Proud to join this brief with our friends @aclunm.bsky.social and @aclu.org's State Supreme Court Initiative
We do a lot in the hopes of supporting state courts and state constitutions as venues and tools for protecting rights, and this piece of it makes me so proud.
Tell every law student you know to join us on March 19 to learn about why they should clerk on a state supreme court!
But the takeaway is that, despite many academic commentators saying that mask bans are destined to lose, the federal district court found that they are actually constitutional so long as they apply to all levels of government and do not discriminate against the federal government. 3/
LAW STUDENTS & RECENT GRADS: Interested in a state supreme court clerkship? Join us on March 19 at 3pm ET for a virtual event where you can hear from justices across the country about the application process and what it's like to clerk. Register below! www.brennancenter.org/events/what-...
NYT’s reporting on the DOD-Anthropic dispute sheds more light on how the Pentagon planned to use Claude for mass surveillance of Americans: by collecting and analyzing commercial bulk data.
So what is this commercial data? And how might Claude be used to collect and analyze it? 🧵 1/
The first state supreme court election of the year takes place today in Arkansas.
It hasn't attracted big spending like some of AR's past judicial races, partly due to these machinations you can read about @boltsmag.org
This is what happens when you effectively have no ethical rules at the top of government — virtually limitless opportunities for insider profiteering.
This is a super interesting case. After the 11th cir ruled police could be sued for arresting a Black pastor for refusing to show ID, the trial court certified the q of whether state law has a show your papers req to the AL Sup Ct. Here’s how the argument went. statecourtreport.org/our-work/ana...
Fascinating report (and thread) by @douglaskeith.bsky.social about $$ in state supreme court elections. The last election cycle was the most expensive EVER for judicial races.
And @statecourtreport.org these are the state supreme court elections I'm watching most closely this year
Despite all this money, Kansas legislators are asking voters this August to axe their less politicized judicial selection system and move to judicial elections, basically asking voters to throw open the door to the multi-million dollar campaigns that come with those elections today
One trend I'm watching is retention elections may no longer be reliably quiet affairs. In Oklahoma, a justice lost a retention election for the first time ever after millions in attack ads. In Arizona, out-of-state donors spent $1m to defend justices from even a potential anti-retention campaign.
The campaign messaging in judicial races is also completely different since Dobbs – in 2020 only 3 percent of campaign ad spots mentioned abortion (and almost all were anti-), but in the 2024 cycle 30 percent of ad spots mentioned abortion and *all* were pro repro rights.
Also for the first time ever, groups on the left spent more than groups on the right.
This is a big change in the story of judicial elections – conservatives have long been more organized around state judicial races, but Dobbs and redistricting fights have led liberal groups to catch up and more.
Graph showing the share of state supreme court election spending by interest groups in every electoral cycle since 2001. In 2001, outside spending accounted for 7.1% of all spending in judicial races, but in 2024 it accounted for 54.2%.
For the first time ever, interest groups spent more money in state supreme court elections than the candidates themselves – a trend that really picked up as a result of Citizens United
We @brennancenter.org have been tracking spending in these races for 25 years, and many of today’s supreme court elections look nothing like those of even a couple years ago.
