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The Courts and the Constitution
The Case for Cameras at Supreme Court Arguments Since May 2020 anyone can hear Supreme Court arguments live. Here is the case for taking the next step to video, and a fair look at the justices' reasons for refusing. Brown Was Decided in 1954, and Making It Real Took Much Longer Brown v. Board ended legal school segregation on paper in 1954. Turning the ruling into integrated classrooms took troops, new laws and decades of local fights. Clarence Earl Gideon's Pencil Petition and How a Case Reaches the Supreme Court Follow one handwritten petition from a Florida prison cell to a unanimous ruling, and learn how cert petitions, conferences, oral argument and opinion day really work. How the Emergency Docket Became a Second Supreme Court What stays, applications and unsigned orders are, how a term coined in a 2015 law review article came to describe a parallel Court, and why it now decides fights over presidential power. Incorporation, or How the Bill of Rights Came to Bind the States The Bill of Rights once limited only Washington. Here is how the Fourteenth Amendment, a 1925 sedition case and decades of rulings made it bind your state and city too. Marbury v. Madison and the 1803 Ruling That Gave Courts the Last Word How a stack of undelivered commissions from John Adams's last night in office became the case that let federal courts strike down laws, and why that power still decides our fights. Originalism Explained, With the Strongest Case Its Critics Make What originalism actually claims, how it grew from Edwin Meese's 1985 speech into the Court's dominant method, and the strongest arguments its critics make against it. Roosevelt's 1937 Court-Packing Plan and the Lesson Both Parties Took From It Franklin Roosevelt's 1937 bid to add justices failed in the Senate even as the Court changed course. Here is what happened, and what today's reformers should learn from it. Standing Doctrine, the Gate That Decides Who Gets Into Federal Court Injury, causation and redressability explained through Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, and why the rule about who may sue now shapes environmental, voting and executive-power cases. Stare Decisis and the Rules for When the Court Reverses Itself A chambermaid's back-pay claim overturned a 1923 precedent in 1937. Here is how stare decisis works, the factors justices cite to overrule, and why both sides invoke it. State Constitutions Are Where Rights Are Being Won Now From Pennsylvania's 2018 map ruling to abortion ballot measures and youth climate cases, state constitutions now protect rights federal courts will not. Here is the case for fighting there. The Case for Eighteen-Year Terms on the Supreme Court Why staggered 18-year terms for justices would lower the stakes of every vacancy, how the plan would work, and honest answers to the strongest constitutional objections.