Nina Totenberg

Some are calling the case over a controversial Texas law the most important abortion rights case in a generation. The Supreme Court's ruling could affect millions of women in several states.

The day after Solicitor General Donald Verrilli announced he was stepping down, he sat down with NPR's Nina Totenberg to reflect on his five years as the government's chief advocate.

The high court deadlocked on one major issue but decided another — handing President Obama a setback on immigration but affirming a constitutional role for affirmative action in college admissions.

The Supreme Court upheld affirmative action in college admissions Thursday in a 4-3 ruling on the University of Texas' use of race as a factor in a program to increase diversity in the student body.

Two major decisions from the high court Thursday: one upholding affirmative action in college admissions, and one shelving President Obama's program protecting immigrants in the country illegally.

Even if police halt someone for no reason, the Supreme Court said, if a reason to search them is discovered, anything found is admissible. Justice Sotomayor says that disproportionately hits the poor.

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that an otherwise illegal search of a pedestrian by a police officer in Utah was permissible under the Constitution because the pedestrian had an outstanding warrant out for his arrest. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a blistering dissent focused on the implications of the decision.

Merrick Garland delivered a commencement address Wednesday at a Washington, D.C., elementary school where he has been a tutor for nearly two decades.

The court ruled Monday that a Puerto Rican law to restructure its debt goes against the Federal Bankruptcy Code. Now it's up to Congress to help the island.

If a prosecuting attorney has signed off on the death penalty against a certain defendant, can that same attorney later be on of a panel of judges reviewing that death sentence?

The likely GOP standard-bearer has accused the judge of bias in the Trump University fraud case because of his Mexican ancestry. But he's widely respected and took on a drug cartel under death threat.

Controversy is roiling the highest ranks of the Republican Party over criticism of a federal judge by the party's presumptive White House nominee, Donald Trump. The judge in question, Gonzalo Curiel, is a drug-cartel busting former prosecutor first named to a state court by a Republican governor, then to the federal bench by President Obama.

After criticism from legal scholars for saying a judge could not treat him fairly because he was of Mexican descent, Donald Trump has extended his concern about judicial bias to Muslim Americans.

Donald Trump intensified his attacks on the federal judge presiding over fraud lawsuits against Trump University — saying Indiana-born Gonzalo Curiel is biased against him because "he's a Mexican."

The solicitor general argued cases ranging from his successful defense of Obamacare to advocacy on behalf of constitutional protections for same-sex marriage.

Justice Clarence Thomas called one of the opinions "a remarkably aggressive" use of the court's power to review the decisions of the states' highest courts.

When Trump Entertainment Resorts filed for bankruptcy in 2014, it won a ruling from a federal bankruptcy judge stripping casino workers of their health insurance and payments to the pension fund.

The justices ruled against a white jury in a Georgia murder case; for minority plaintiffs who challenged voting districts in Virginia; and for a postal employee who said he lost his job due to race.

It has been nearly 30 years since the high court set new rules to counter race discrimination in the seating of juries. But in some jurisdictions, the propensity to bar black jurors persisted.

Trump promised to appoint to the high court the kinds of people the GOP base would be happy with.