The Trump administration on Wednesday asked the Supreme Court to pause a ruling by a federal judge in Washington, D.C., that barred the government from ending a program that allows Haitians to remain in the United States temporarily. U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer also asked the justices to take up the merits of the case, as well as a similar one already before them involving Syria, without waiting for a federal appeals court to weigh in. “The issues that” the government’s application “presents are … common among the numerous challenges to” efforts to terminate the program for a variety of countries, “have been ventilated in litigation across the country, and cry out for immediate resolution,” Sauer wrote.

Critics and supporters of President Donald Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship often focus on the order’s barring of automatic citizenship to children born to individuals unlawfully present in the United States. In this column, I would instead like to focus on the order’s barring of such citizenship to children born to individuals lawfully but transiently present in the United States, because the order’s treatment of those children brings the dispute into sharp focus. One side argues that the 14th Amendment effectively codifies the English common law of subjectship to declare that the children of foreign visitors are birthright citizens. The other side argues that the 14th Amendment instead codifies an American rule of declaring as citizens those who have chosen to make this country their home. The latter view is the better one.

Free speech on university campuses is a perennially hot topic, perhaps most recently reflected in protests about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at places like Ball State University, Harvard, and Columbia. This debate has also arisen in the context of offensive speech, harassment (under Titles VI and IX), bias response teams, and speaker policies. In response to each event, the public, commentators, and scholars have questioned the appropriate boundaries of speech in the college environment, and, what, if any, constitutional protections exist.

So how does the First Amendment apply to students in the context of public universities? The question seems clear, but the answer is surprisingly murky. Although the court has carved out a First Amendment framework for K-12 schools, it has not done so for universities, and the lower federal courts are in stark disagreement on this issue. This SCOTUS explainer takes a deep dive into what, exactly, is going on here, and how this might affect current (and future) events. 

Courtly Observations is a recurring series by Erwin Chemerinsky that focuses on what the Supreme Court’s decisions will mean for the law, for lawyers and lower courts, and for people’s lives.

The war in Iran shows how far the United States has come from any semblance of enforcing checks and balances as to war powers. President Donald Trump obviously believes that he can do whatever he wants in this regard without needing congressional approval. And he has reason not to worry about the courts holding his actions in Iran unconstitutional, as the judiciary has abdicated any serious role in enforcing the Constitution in times of war. It was not always this way, but rather a development of the last century.

A Second Opinion is a recurring series by Haley Proctor on the Second Amendment and constitutional litigation.

Last Monday, the Supreme Court heard argument in United States v. Hemani. In that case, Ali Danial Hemani argues that the Second Amendment forbids his prosecution for possessing a firearm as “an unlawful user of” marijuana because disarming people for mere drug use is inconsistent with “the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”