Are we headed for a constitutional crisis? Prof. Craig Green joins WHYY’s Studio 2 to discuss concerns that America is headed for a constitutional crisis.

After historic indictment, doctors will keep mailing abortion pills over state lines New York and Louisiana are engaged in an escalating legal battle over “shield laws” intended to protect abortion care providers. Dean Rebouché, who helped draft the first such law, explains their purpose and why the interstate dispute could end up before the Supreme Court.

Trump Agency Firing Cases March Toward Receptive Supreme Court As litigation over the president’s power to remove agency leaders moves through the courts, observers note that the Supreme Court has been eroding safeguards embodied in a 1935 decision, Humphrey’s Executor, for a long time. “There’s a lot of reasons to think Humphrey’s is on its last legs,” said Prof. Jane Manners.

Patent Damages on Tap as Full Federal Circuit Hears Google Case The Federal Circuit is being asked to restrict the kinds of evidence expert witnesses can describe to juries in Google’s appeal of a patent- infringement decision. Prof. Paul Gugliuzza says the case gives the appeals court a chance to “combat district judges’ temptation to avoid engaging with complex legal and evidentiary issues on patent damages by simply throwing everything to the jury.”

Lawyers: Uncle Sam Needs You! In commentary for the Legal Intelligencer, Prof. Jules Epstein and co-authors Ellen Brotman and Amy J. Coco raise the alarm about threats to the rule of law and issue a call for unity in defense of the profession, the judiciary, and the Constitution.

Trump’s Bribery-Law Order Starts Upending Criminal Cases Interim US Attorney John Giordano has asked a court to pause active criminal prosecutions under an anti-bribery law while he determines the applicability of an executive order curtailing its enforcement. Prof. Michael Donnella calls the letter a “very loud, powerful signal in the direction that it is not going to be business as usual” for FCPA enforcement.

Key court hearing as Alabama threatens prosecutions over abortion support. Alabama’s attorney general has threatened to prosecute groups that help pregnant people travel to other states for abortion care. Dean Rebouché sees the threats as “a real encroachment on what we take for granted about how states treat each other – but also within the state, that the state will turn its law enforcement power against somebody who has done something that is not illegal.”

JD Vance Fails Constitutional Law If Vice President Vance was graded on his knowledge and application of constitutional law, writes Prof. Jules Epstein, he would come up short.

What Are Abortion Shield Laws? Abortion shield laws are in the spotlight as New York protects a doctor from charges in Louisiana and Texas. Dean Rebouché, who helped draft the first such bill in 2022, tells Time Magazine the cases “point to what we can expect moving forward for intense interstate conflict … given that Dobbs returned abortion to the states and a third of the country prohibits abortion from the earliest moments of pregnancy or before six weeks, just as many states have codified abortion rights in their constitutions and their state laws.”

Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies Department hosts LGBTQ+ panel – The Temple News Professor Dara Purvis discussed the series of Executive Orders targeting transgender people at a recent University faculty panel. “It’s direction, it’s not law,” Purvis said. “That’s the important thing. It is a direction to the executive branch, which includes agencies saying, ‘Here’s how I, the president, want you to implement, to execute the law.’ It doesn’t overrule statutes. It doesn’t change the language of statutes. It doesn’t overrule Supreme Court decisions. But it can have a lot of impact.”