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Law In The News

Which Supreme Court cases are actually important?

December 18, 2025

t’s the age-old question: Does the Supreme Court decide its cases based on rank partisanship rather than legal principles?

Many scholars and commentators unhesitatingly answer in the affirmative. Such individuals may acknowledge that the plurality of Supreme Court decisions are unanimous (42% last term) and that the vast majority of the court’s cases do not break down by the 6-3 conservative/liberal split (over 90% last term). But, in their view, the important cases are decided along partisan lines.

Of course, this raises the obvious follow-up: Which cases are the important ones?

Ex-Harvard morgue manager who sold stolen body parts receives eight-year sentence

December 17, 2025

A former Harvard Medical School morgue manager was sentenced on Tuesday to eight years in prison for stealing and selling organs and other parts of cadavers that were donated to the school for medical research and education.

Prosecutors said Cedric Lodge from 2018 through at least March 2020 stole parts from cadavers including heads, faces, brains, skin and hands after they had been used for research and teaching purposes and transported them from Harvard's morgue in Massachusetts to his home in Goffstown, New Hampshire.

Together, the Lodges sold stolen remains to several individuals including two in Pennsylvania, which the buyers mostly then resold, prosecutors said.

Plea or poop? Road rage defecator takes rehab over trial

December 16, 2025

A Delaware County, Pennsylvania, woman — known regionally as the “Delco Pooper” after she was captured on video angrily defecating on a car — avoided trial Tuesday, instead entering into a rehabilitative program for her fecal faults.

“I wanted to punch her in the face, but I pooped on her car instead and went home,” Solometo said, according to the affidavit.

Trump signs order declaring illicit fentanyl a 'weapon of mass destruction'

December 15, 2025

The order asserts that illicit fentanyl is "closer to a chemical weapon than a narcotic," noting that as little as two milligrams — "an almost undetectable trace amount equivalent to 10 to 15 grains of table salt" — can be lethal. It states that hundreds of thousands of Americans have died from fentanyl overdoses and argues that the drug’s production and distribution by organized criminal networks now constitute a significant national-security threat.