Amherst professor Austin Sarat discusses the botched lethal injection of Christa Pike in Tennessee in the context of America’s long history of failed executions and court rulings allowing states to try again. Professor Sarat argues that Pike’s case is unlikely to end lethal injection because states rarely abandon an execution method after it fails, and switching methods is costly and no guarantee of improvement.

Amherst professor Austin Sarat discusses Judge Timothy Kelly’s temporary restraining order requiring President Donald Trump to restore the White House press credentials of CNN, MS NOW, and Politico reporters. Professor Sarat argues that the White House revoked the passes over negative coverage, that its national security justification was a sham, and that Kelly correctly applied binding precedent requiring due process before a press pass is revoked.

Cornell Law professor Michael C. Dorf discusses the U.S. Civil Rights Commission’s final report on the federal response to campus antisemitism, examining both its bipartisan findings and the separate commissioner statements urging it to go further. Professor Dorf argues that the report’s nuanced approach—acknowledging administrators’ genuine difficulty balancing free speech with antidiscrimination law while criticizing the Trump administration’s pretextual and legally flawed enforcement efforts—is justified, and that calls for a broader scope or a formal antisemitism definition would be legally and practically misguided.

University of Pennsylvania professor Marci A. Hamilton discusses how child sex abuse and the Epstein files could affect the midterm elections, focusing on Republican candidates and on Pennsylvania’s failure to pass a law letting past abuse victims sue. Professor Hamilton argues that voters of both parties want powerful people held accountable, and that Republican leaders who ignore survivors will lose votes.

UC Davis Law professor Vikram David Amar discusses the U.S. Supreme Court’s third rejection of Republican officials’ attempts to use Missouri’s 2025 redistricting map (HB1) for the 2026 congressional election, situating the ruling within the broader national redistricting conflict and analyzing what it reveals about the Court’s emergency docket practices. Professor Amar argues that the decision undercuts claims that the Court’s shadow docket favors Trump, demonstrates the Court’s insistence that lower federal courts respect its prior rulings and state supreme court authority under Rooker-Feldman and Moore v. Harper, and shows the Justices applying the Purcell doctrine while placing blame for the electoral confusion squarely on Missouri’s Republican Secretary of State rather than on the state courts.

UC Davis Law professor Vikram David Amar discusses the Eighth Circuit’s latest ruling reinstating Missouri's Republican-drawn HB1 congressional maps for the 2026 election, examining how this decision fits into the ongoing legal battle following the Supreme Court's September 10 stay of a similar lower court order. Professor Amar argues that the Eighth Circuit's ruling is legally untenable because it contradicts the Supreme Court’s implicit merits assessment from September 10 and violates the Purcell doctrine’s prohibition on late judicial interference with elections already underway, leading him to predict the Supreme Court will again intervene to block HB1’s maps from being used in November.

UNLV Boyd School of Law professor Leslie C. Griffin discusses St. Mary Catholic Parish v. Roy, a Supreme Court case about whether Colorado can deny state funding to Catholic schools that want to exclude LGBTQ students and families while still receiving public money. Professor Griffin argues that religious freedom does not entitle schools to violate neutral antidiscrimination laws, and that the Court should reject any rule that would let religious institutions get paid to discriminate.

Amherst professor Austin Sarat discusses Georgia’s planned execution of Stacey Humphreys and the related lawsuit by Appen Media Group challenging the state’s secrecy rules for lethal-injection procedures, while placing that dispute in the broader national fight over execution secrecy. Professor Sarat argues that Georgia’s restrictions are constitutionally and normatively unjustified because they give the state too much unchecked control over what the press can observe, and that the court should grant access to ensure transparency and accountability.

UC Davis Law professor Vikram David Amar discusses the Missouri Supreme Court’s ruling that blocks HB1, the state’s new congressional map, from taking effect until voters decide a referendum on it, and he explains why that ruling will probably withstand the state’s expected appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. Professor Amar argues that Missouri’s federal constitutional objections are weak because the Missouri Constitution plainly permits the referendum, Supreme Court precedent has long allowed such referenda in congressional redistricting, and the U.S. Supreme Court is unlikely to disrupt the state court’s decision so close to the election.

Amherst professor Austin Sarat discusses the recent resurgence of capital punishment in the United States, examining rising execution numbers, shifting public opinion, and the pro-death-penalty influence of the Trump administration. Professor Sarat argues that abolitionists must urgently adapt their messaging and political strategies to counter these developments and prevent further erosion of the movement's progress.

UC Davis Law professor Vikram David Amar and Illinois Law professor Jason Mazzone discuss three recent California legislative measures aimed at federal law enforcement: a “converse-1983” civil rights statute titled the “No Kings” Act, the “Get the Feds Out” Act, and a ban on electric shock gloves. Professors Amar and Mazzone argue that while the “No Kings” Act establishes a constitutionally sound remedy for federal constitutional violations, the other two measures constitute performative legislation that unconstitutionally attempts to regulate federal operations in violation of the Supremacy Clause.

Austin Sarat discusses the Trump administration’s refusal to appeal a federal court decision striking down National Firearms Act regulations, framing the move as part of a broader pattern of selective non-enforcement. Professor Sarat argues that routinely abandoning and refusing to defend disfavored laws violates the executive’s constitutional duty to faithfully execute the law and fundamentally threatens the separation of powers.

Cornell Law professor Michael C. Dorf discusses President Trump’s executive order to rename Lake Ontario “Lake America,” explaining its political symbolism, historical ignorance, and legal limits. Professor Dorf argues that the order is unlawful because Congress delegated geographic-naming authority to federal agencies that must consider public and state interests, and that New York businesses and the state could sue under the APA to block it.

University of Pennsylvania professor Marci A. Hamilton examines how the religious right and Christian Nationalist movement promote a narrow framework of “religious liberty” to influence American jurisprudence and public policy. Professor Hamilton argues that these groups misrepresent religious freedom to impose minority theological beliefs on the public, erode civil rights for women and LGBTQ+ individuals, and compel the government to fund religious discrimination.

UC Davis Law professor Vikram David Amar discusses the Fourth Circuit’s decision in Grant v. Belangia, which invalidated a South Carolina law restricting automatic absentee voting to seniors and created a federal circuit split on the Twenty-Sixth Amendment. Professor Amar contends that the bipartisan panel correctly applied originalist principles to hold that the Constitution strictly forbids age-based discrimination in voting procedures, establishing a sound textual model for eventual Supreme Court review.

Touro University, Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center professor Rodger D. Citron discusses a recent podcast conversation with Professor Rachel Rosenbloom regarding the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. Barbara and the broader legal history of birthright citizenship. Professor Citron highlights that while the Court rightly reaffirmed that the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees birthright citizenship, the surprisingly narrow margin and fractured, revisionist dissents underscore ongoing political threats to constitutional equality.

Amherst professor Austin Sarat discusses the Trump administration’s expanding use of arrest threats and criminal prosecutions against state and local officials to enforce federal immigration and election policies. Professor Sarat argues that this strategy marks a dangerous shift toward autocracy, weaponizing federal law enforcement to intimidate political opponents and coerce compliance when judicial avenues fail.

Illinois Law professors Lesley M. Wexler and Tony Ghiotto discuss the D.C. Circuit's Talbott ruling on the transgender military ban, covering judicial deference standards, the harsh reality of ongoing separation proceedings, weak reinstatement precedent from the COVID-19 vaccine mandate reversal, and the new testosterone-screening policy’s effect on the litigation. Professors Wexler and Ghiotto argue the ruling risks giving the Administration a roadmap to shield future exclusionary policies from real scrutiny, and that even a future reversal of the ban is unlikely to make separated servicemembers whole.

Amherst professor Austin Sarat discusses a lawsuit by two Idaho death row inmates challenging the secretive, unexplained process behind the state’s newly adopted execution protocol, which grants officials broad discretion to deviate from procedures at will. Professor Sarat argues that such vague protocols undermine accountability when executions go wrong, and urges Idaho courts to resist the troubling trend of relaxing administrative law norms whenever the death penalty is at stake.

Cornell Law professor Michael C. Dorf discusses the Board of Immigration Appeals’ request for amicus briefs on whether it must follow U.S. Supreme Court and circuit precedent on constitutional questions even when doing so would require finding a statute or regulation unconstitutional, a power agencies otherwise lack. Professor Dorf argues that while the two obligations can often be reconciled through careful distinctions (such as those between facial and as-applied challenges), he warns that a BIA now dominated by Trump appointees may exploit this tension in bad faith to consistently rule against immigrants, leaving the courts to correct any opportunistic or inconsistent application of these principles.