From the right to own semiautomatic rifles to the rules governing voter registration, the upcoming U.S. Supreme Court term will see the justices tackle a broad swath of constitutional and access to justice issues.
Since the mid-1980s, DNA testing has exonerated hundreds of wrongfully convicted people and reshaped the criminal justice system. Rodney Reed's decadeslong unsuccessful effort to test the belt prosecutors say he used to kill a woman, however, shows how difficult access to post-conviction DNA testing can be, even for prisoners with credible innocence claims.
The U.S. Supreme Court has considered dozens of emergency petitions involving executive policies since President Donald Trump's return to office. While justices often defend their emergency rulings as stop-gap measures, people at the center of those cases — who've lost their legal status, jobs, or federal funding — say that even interim decisions have had lasting effects on their lives.
The U.S. Supreme Court's short opinion last year finding that an Oklahoma woman's capital trial was potentially marred by sexist and prejudicial evidence has been cited over 100 times since, and not just in cases involving gender bias. Litigants have invoked the ruling to challenge their convictions over a wide range of issues involving prosecutorial prejudice, bias and trial fairness — but courts so far have been reluctant to grant relief.
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From the right to own semiautomatic rifles to the rules governing voter registration, the upcoming U.S. Supreme Court term will see the justices tackle a broad swath of constitutional and access to justice issues.
Since the mid-1980s, DNA testing has exonerated hundreds of wrongfully convicted people and reshaped the criminal justice system. Rodney Reed's decadeslong unsuccessful effort to test the belt prosecutors say he used to kill a woman, however, shows how difficult access to post-conviction DNA testing can be, even for prisoners with credible innocence claims.
The U.S. Supreme Court has considered dozens of emergency petitions involving executive policies since President Donald Trump's return to office. While justices often defend their emergency rulings as stop-gap measures, people at the center of those cases — who've lost their legal status, jobs, or federal funding — say that even interim decisions have had lasting effects on their lives.
The U.S. Supreme Court's short opinion last year finding that an Oklahoma woman's capital trial was potentially marred by sexist and prejudicial evidence has been cited over 100 times since, and not just in cases involving gender bias. Litigants have invoked the ruling to challenge their convictions over a wide range of issues involving prosecutorial prejudice, bias and trial fairness — but courts so far have been reluctant to grant relief.
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October 15, 2026
Attorneys for a New York man shot by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers while his son was in the car renewed their attempt to free him from detention, saying he is still in need of medical attention.
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October 15, 2026
Muscogee (Creek) Nation Principal Chief David Hill is asking an Oklahoma federal court to dismiss a challenge that looks to block the tribe from denying citizenship to descendants of people once enslaved by the Indigenous nation, arguing that it can be achieved only through a constitutional amendment and legislative process.
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October 15, 2026
Three nonprofits are mounting a legal challenge to a provision of the North Carolina state budget that strips funding for civil legal aid services historically provided by the state's Interest on Lawyers' Trust Accounts program, saying the maneuver flouts directives by the Tar Heel state's top court and violates the First Amendment.
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October 14, 2026
The U.S. Department of Justice has proposed a bill to Congress to bolster the use of the death penalty in both state and federal courts, in a bid to advance a related executive order President Donald Trump signed at the beginning of his second term.
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October 13, 2026
The U.S. Supreme Court said Tuesday that it would not review an Eleventh Circuit decision stripping qualified immunity from a fingerprint analyst who is facing allegations that she fabricated evidence that sent a wrongly convicted man to death row.
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October 13, 2026
The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to consider whether prisoners can appeal denials of their federal habeas corpus petitions if there is a circuit split on the issue underlying their petition, even if their home circuit has precedent against them.
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October 07, 2026
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court agreed this week to hear a challenge to a geofence warrant just months after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Chatrie v. U.S. that such warrants implicate Fourth Amendment search protections.
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October 05, 2026
The Michigan Supreme Court has taken up an appeal asking it to decide if a landmark decision that bans the inclusion of previously acquitted charges as a factor for sentencing applies retroactively even after a sentence has been appealed.
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October 05, 2026
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday vacated a Second Circuit decision dismissing the sentencing appeal of a man who pled guilty to a role in a murder-for-hire plot, telling the circuit court to take another look in light of the high court's new miscarriage-of-justice exception for criminal appeal waivers.
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October 05, 2026
The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Monday to review a Tenth Circuit decision denying a former Tulsa police officer qualified immunity from a civil suit alleging she used excessive force when she shot and killed an unarmed man.
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October 05, 2026
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to review a Fourth Circuit ruling that blocked a federal prisoner's constitutional challenge to a sentence enhanced under the formerly mandatory federal sentencing guidelines.
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October 05, 2026
A New Jersey appeals court has ruled that police were incorrectly granted a geofence warrant because their application failed to establish a "nexus" between a string of gas station robberies and a potential suspect's cellphone location data.
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October 05, 2026
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a challenge to a John Doe warrant and the warrantless collection and DNA testing of trash items used to convict a man in 2024 for the rape of a Penn State student in 1995.
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October 01, 2026
A New York federal judge vacated a 2025 policy change that gave U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents "unfettered discretion" to arrest noncitizens at immigration courthouses after the government admitted guidance cited for the shift never applied to immigration courts.
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October 01, 2026
The Michigan Court of Appeals has "conditionally reversed" a man's conviction for "child sexually abusive activity," with a panel finding that his counsel did not correctly challenge a police sting operation, causing him to be ineffectively represented at trial.
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October 01, 2026
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee suspended the state's executions Thursday and ordered a third-party investigation into the botched execution of death row prisoner Christa Pike, who remained hospitalized after surviving two doses of the sedative pentobarbital.
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October 01, 2026
The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to review whether the Trump administration can detain unauthorized immigrants without bond until their immigration cases conclude, regardless of whether they had already been living in the country.
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September 30, 2026
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court will decide whether its March ruling ending mandatory life sentences for second-degree murder should be applied retroactively to prisoners already serving those sentences.
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September 25, 2026
The Eleventh Circuit ruled that police spotting a gun protruding from a defendant’s pocket wasn’t enough to trigger reasonable suspicion in Florida, a state where concealed carry is treated as presumptively legal, and the Fifth Circuit rejected a “weird” argument from a person convicted of being a felon in possession. Here, Law360 highlights access to justice stories arising from litigation, verdicts and judgments you may have missed.
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September 25, 2026
A recent California Supreme Court ruling could help low-income litigants overcome a court reporter shortage that has left millions of hearings without an official record, undermining their chances of successfully appealing court decisions. For domestic violence survivors, advocates say, that record can mean the difference between challenging a potentially dangerous court order and having no viable path to appeal.
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September 25, 2026
An exonerated man can continue pursuing civil rights claims against three Detroit police officers accused of withholding evidence about an alleged jailhouse informant program that he says contributed to his wrongful conviction in a 1994 triple homicide, a Michigan federal judge has ruled.
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September 25, 2026
A Pennsylvania federal judge on Friday awarded the attorneys representing a man in a wrongful conviction case less than half their desired amount for work done in pursuit of those fees, ruling that $135,795 was reasonable compensation.
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September 24, 2026
The U.S. Government Accountability Office has denied a contractor's protest over the terms of a solicitation for legal services for unaccompanied migrant children, saying the Office of Refugee Resettlement adequately explained how the challenged requirements were related to its needs.
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September 22, 2026
The Trump administration implored the U.S. Supreme Court to cure a circuit split over noncitizens filing habeas petitions to challenge their detention during pending removal proceedings, warning of "intolerable disuniformity" in how the Immigration and Nationality Act is administered.
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September 21, 2026
The Ninth Circuit held in a published opinion Monday that a certified class of asylum-seekers apprehended well within the U.S. border can challenge their detentions, rejecting the government's contention that the U.S. Supreme Court limited their due process rights.