Adam Liptak

The Supreme Court on Wednesday seemed ready to side with Bob McDonnell, the former governor of Virginia who was convicted of public corruption and faces two years in prison.

The Supreme Court Monday seemed sharply divided during an extended argument over a challenge to President Obama’s plan that would shield millions of unauthorized immigrants from deportation and allow them to work in the country.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday weighed moral theology and parsed insurance terminology in an unusual argument that seemed to leave the justices sharply divided over what the government may do to provide free insurance coverage for contraception to female workers. A 4-4 tie appeared to be a real possibility.

Without explanation, the Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear an unusual lawsuit challenging Colorado’s legalization of recreational marijuana.

In a significant victory for the Obama administration, Chief Justice John Roberts on Thursday refused to block an Environmental Protection Agency regulation limiting emissions of mercury and other toxic pollutants from coal-fired power plants.

Thousands of dignitaries, friends, local residents and tourists will pay their respects to Scalia, who was the current court’s longest serving member when he died at 79 Saturday at a Texas ranch.

An Obama appointment would be the most consequential ideological shift on the court since 1991, creating a liberal majority that would almost certainly reshape American law and American life.

Justice Antonin Scalia, whose transformative legal theories, vivid writing and outsize personality made him a leader of a conservative intellectual renaissance in his three decades on the Supreme Court, was found dead on Saturday at a resort in West Texas, according to a statement from Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. He was 79.

The Supreme Court said Tuesday that it would consider a legal challenge to President Barack Obama’s overhaul of the nation’s immigration rules, agreeing to examine the reach of presidential power as it decides the fate of one of his most far-reaching executive actions.

The Supreme Court seemed poised on Monday to deliver a severe blow to organized labor. The justices appeared divided along familiar lines during an extended argument over whether government workers who choose not to join unions may nonetheless be required to help pay for collective bargaining.

A closely divided Supreme Court on Tuesday struggled to decide “what kind of democracy people wanted,” as Justice Stephen G. Breyer put it during an argument over the meaning of the constitutional principle of “one person one vote.”

The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear its first major abortion case since 2007, one that has the potential to affect millions of women and to revise the constitutional principles governing abortion rights.

In a move that may signal the inevitability of a nationwide right to same-sex marriage, the Supreme Court on Monday let stand appeals court rulings allowing such unions in five states.

After back-to-back terms ending in historic rulings that riveted the nation, the Supreme Court might have been expected to return to its usual diet of routine cases that rarely engage the public.