United States Supreme Court

For generations, the United States Supreme Court projected an image of institutional unity even when the Justices profoundly disagreed. While majority opinions, concurrences, and dissents revealed competing views of the Constitution, the Court itself rarely displayed internal friction in public. The 2026 Term has looked different.

Historically, disagreements belonged in the pages of the United States Reports, not during opinion announcements or through public exchanges between members of the Supreme Court.

There have always been strong personalities, competing judicial philosophies, and sharply divided votes. What makes the 2026 remarkable is not simply the number of 6 to 3 decisions or controversial constitutional questions. It is that Americans increasingly are seeing the disagreements themselves.

On May 29, 2026, reporting surrounding the United States Supreme Court’s review of a Mississippi death penalty case again pushed one of the oldest constitutional problems in American criminal law back into public discussion. The issue involves racial discrimination in jury selection under Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986), and whether prosecutors improperly struck black jurors during a capital murder trial.

The opinion matters far beyond Mississippi. Jury selection disputes are a regular aspect of criminal trials in North Carolina. Prosecutors, defense lawyers, and trial judges still wrestle with the practical reality that Batson litigation remains one of the hardest constitutional violations to prove cleanly and one of the easiest constitutional protections to weaken through procedural language. Readers should care because jury selection determines who exercises the power of judgment in a criminal courtroom. A constitutional right means little if discriminatory conduct can be repackaged as “strategy,” “demeanor,” or “trial preference.”

Articles Tagged with United States Supreme Court

The 2026 United States Supreme Court | Public Disputes and Institutional Trust

Racial Bias in Jury Selection | Batson Challenges

TL;DR Batson Challenges |Racial Bias During Voir Dire Jury Selection