While on the Supreme Court, Justice Antonin Scalia, who died this month at 79, worked to make society less just for black Americans, railing against affirmative action and seeking to undermine the Voting Rights Act. His admirers would attribute this not to rank bigotry, but to his textualist legal philosophy.…

The GOP-controlled Senate has said loudly and repeatedly that they’re going to refuse to hold a hearing for any Supreme Court nominee President Obama might pick. In response, he wrote a blog post appealing to the Senate’s sense of fairness, law, and Constitutional responsibility. Hmm.

In a press conference Tuesday afternoon, President Obama spoke about replacing Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who died on Saturday.

There are going to be kookoos any time a celebrity dies—we weren’t there when it happened, so, invariably, we don’t know the real truth. I am cool with this because I love to dream, since dreaming doesn’t hurt anyone. But we have just hit the conspiracy jackpot: the 79-year-young Antonin Scalia, a highly-controversial…

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s death sent 2016 presidential candidates into complete tailspin—not only is the choice of his replacement something that will meaningfully affect the sorts of values our country tolerates, it is also something blessedly new about which they can have a vigorous opinion.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died at the age of 79 on Saturday. It was an apparently peaceful death, by all accounts, in his bedroom at a West Texas luxury resort after a weekend of quail hunting. He has children and grandchildren and Ruth Bader Ginsburg to mourn him; let’s not do that here. Because Scalia,…

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died only Saturday, but with the stop of his pulse came a firestorm of debate over when and under what terms his replacement would be appointed. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has already threatened to block anyone President Obama proposes, arguing that “it would be…

The late Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia died this week of a heart attack, according to his death certificate.

On Monday, the Supreme Court forbade North Dakota from enforcing a “fetal heart beat law” which would ban abortions if a heartbeat is detected, even as early as six weeks into a pregnancy, according to the Associated Press.

Over the past few years—well, frankly, since the Supreme Court ruled on Roe v. Wade in 1973—we’ve seen a proliferation of evidence that a woman’s right to have an abortion is actively being curtailed by our nation’s representatives. But it’s easy to forget that if you lived before 1973, your lifetime likely spanned…

Judge Judith Sheindlin is not a U.S. Supreme Court Justice. But maybe Judge Judith Sheindlin should be a U.S. Supreme Court Justice. Maybe the 13 percent of Americans who think Judge Judith Sheindlin is a U.S. Supreme Court Justice are just dreamers. And maybe we should listen to the dreamers a little more often.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the sentencing of a Florida man to death was unconstitutional. The next day, the state’s supreme court ordered officials to figure out how that ruling affected the case of another man, set to be executed in under a month.

During a Supreme Court argument regarding the constitutionality of affirmative action on Wednesday, Justice Antonin Scalia suggested that minority students might consider going to a “slower-track school where they do well.” By that logic, Scalia should probably be on a slower-track court where he doesn’t feel so…

Today we were reminded yet again that an out-and-out racist is allowed to sit on the highest court in the land. The oral arguments for the Supreme Court’s affirmative action case were heard today and included the devil incarnate Justice Antonin Scalia suggesting that black students are better off going to easier…

Good news, for now and for once: a federal appeals court has struck down a Wisconsin law requiring physicians who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital. The measure has “nonexistent” medical benefits, the court found, and would create illegal, undue barriers to abortion access.

Amy Hagstrom Miller is used to fielding frantic phone calls. She’s been working in abortion care since 1989; in 2003 she founded Whole Woman’s Health, a group of clinics in five states that provide gynecological care and abortions. In Texas, Whole Woman’s hotline is getting one particular call in particular, over and…

The exceedingly conservative 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled against an Obama administration plan that would have allowed millions of undocumented families to remain in the country. On Monday night, the 5th agreed with a lower court, ruling that the immigration plan couldn’t be enforced while 26 states are…

Today in About Damn Time: the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery uncloaked a portrait featuring the women of the United States Supreme Court, past and present. As of November 2, 2015, the painting hangs in the Washington, D.C. gallery.

Wives—and until 1981, they were always wives—of Supreme Court justices have historically had roles not unlike a gaggle of First Ladies: sitting for photographs in Good Housekeeping, sitting in a special reserved section of the court even after their husbands retired, gathering for lunch three times a year in what used…

The Supreme Court begins its fall term today, and it’s already shaping up to be a doozy. Its docket includes public employee unions, affirmative action, the death penalty, and—oh, hell, why not?— probably abortion and birth control, too. While all of these are politically contentious issues with the potential to shape…