Sometimes concurring opinions of justices add little to what is in the court’s decision. Other times, however, they take a very different approach and urge a major change in the law.
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The Supreme Court on Monday allowed Texas to continue to enforce, at least for now, a law that requires app stores to verify its buyers’ ages and obtain parental consent for minors to download apps and to purchase paid content within those apps. In a pair of brief, unsigned orders issued on Monday afternoon, the justices turned down requests to reinstate orders by a federal judge in Austin that barred the state from implementing the law. There were no public dissents from the orders.
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By several measures, this term was more ideologically divided than the last one. Last term, 15.2% of the court’s decisions were decided by a 6-3 vote, and 9% of all decisions were 6-3 ideological splits. This term, those figures rose significantly, to 28.8% and 22.7%, respectively. The liberal justices also dissented together more often, moving from 15% of cases last term to 24.2% this term.
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It’s a question that most Supreme Court watchers are all-too-familiar with: What should we call the court’s expanded practice of ruling on cases in an unusually expedited fashion? We confronted this question a few months ago when organizing a panel on the topic. Available names abounded: the leading contenders are now shadow docket, emergency docket, and interim docket, but others in circulation include the equity, stay, lightning, non-merits, or irregular docket. Ever equanimous, we settled on: “The Docket That Shall Not Be Named.”
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Two of the world’s most famous magicians have filed a brief in the U.S. Supreme Court arguing that using "investigative hypnosis" to help a witness identify a man convicted of murder is nothing but an illusion.
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