SCOTUS Takes Up Mandatory Immigration Detention, the Forced-Labor Tariffs Go to Trade Court & Tennessee's Failed Execution

This Day in Legal History: The Nuremberg Verdicts

On October 1, 1946, the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg delivered its sentences on the surviving leaders of Nazi Germany. Of the 22 defendants, 19 were convicted and three were acquitted. Twelve were sentenced to death, three to life imprisonment, and four to prison terms of 10 to 20 years. Hermann Göring killed himself the night before his scheduled execution. Martin Bormann, tried in absentia, was never found to face his sentence. The other death sentences were carried out on October 16.

The legal achievement of Nuremberg was the decision to hold a trial at all. The Allies could have simply executed the Nazi leadership; some officials argued for exactly that. Instead, at the urging of figures like U.S. Justice Robert Jackson, who left the Supreme Court to serve as chief prosecutor, they built a court, allowed defense counsel, admitted evidence, and let the outcome turn on proof. The acquittals mattered as much as the convictions: they showed the tribunal was deciding cases, not ratifying a foregone conclusion. Nuremberg also established principles that still anchor international law, most importantly that “following orders” is not a defense to crimes against humanity, and that individuals, not just states, can be held criminally responsible for aggression and atrocities.

The significance of October 1, 1946 is the idea in today’s opening quote, from Jackson’s opening statement: that even when dealing with the worst crimes imaginable, the state submits to legal process rather than acting on raw power. That idea, that the government must work through courts and procedure, especially when it is detaining, removing, or putting people to death, runs through every story we cover today.

The Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether the administration can detain millions of immigrants for the entire length of their deportation proceedings without a bond hearing. In July 2025, the Department of Homeland Security issued guidance saying that immigrants who entered the country illegally are subject to mandatory detention with no bond hearing while their cases proceed, a process that can take months or years. The legal fight is about which section of the immigration statute applies. The law has one provision that requires detention for “applicants for admission,” historically understood to mean people arriving at the border. A separate provision governs people already living in the country and generally lets them ask an immigration judge for release on bond. The administration’s new position is that anyone who entered without inspection remains an “applicant for admission” no matter how long they’ve lived here, which would move them into the mandatory-detention category. The case the Court took involves Ricardo Aparecido Barbosa da Cunha, a Brazilian national who authorities say entered illegally two decades ago and applied for asylum in 2016. The Second Circuit ruled against the government. And according to the reporting, appeals judges in nine of the eleven federal circuits to consider the question have concluded that detention without a bond hearing violates federal law. That makes the administration’s position an outlier among the lower courts, which is part of why the Supreme Court stepped in. The stakes are very large. A bond hearing doesn’t guarantee release; it just means a judge decides whether a person is a flight risk or a danger. If the Court sides with the administration, millions of long-term residents could be held without that individualized review for the length of their cases. The Court will hear it in the term that opens Monday.

US Supreme Court to hear clash over Trump’s immigration detention policy | Reuters · Yahoo News · National Immigration Forum

The U.S. Court of International Trade heard arguments in a challenge to the President’s “forced labor” tariffs, and opponents say the case is a test of whether he can rebuild the tariff power the Supreme Court took away in February. Imposed in late July, the tariffs range from 10% to 12.5% on goods from 60 trading partners, including the European Union and China, and they cover more than 99% of goods imported into the United States. The stated justification is that those countries have failed to stop imports made with forced labor. Four small businesses and 25 Democratic-led states sued, and their three cases were consolidated before a three-judge panel with appointees of Presidents Trump, Obama, and Biden. Their argument is that the trade statute the administration relied on requires country-specific findings of unfair trade practices, reached through a real investigation. In their telling, “forced labor” is a pretext: a label stretched over nearly all imports from 60 countries to recreate the broad, global tariff authority the Supreme Court rejected when it struck down the emergency-powers tariffs. The legal question is how closely courts will examine the factual basis for a statutory trade remedy. If the statute requires findings and the findings are thin or generic, the tariffs are vulnerable. If the court defers to the executive’s judgment on trade practices, they likely survive. The panel isn’t expected to rule from the bench. This connects directly to my column from last week on building an unwinding mechanism into tariffs from the start. If these tariffs fall too, importers will be back in the refund line, and consumers who paid higher prices will again have no clear way to get that money back.

US trade court to weigh challenge to Trump’s forced labor tariffs | Reuters · CNBC · Foreign Policy

And finally, a story that took a turn no one expected. Tennessee tried to execute Christa Pike on Wednesday night, and the execution failed. Pike was the only woman on Tennessee’s death row, convicted of the 1995 torture and murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a fellow student at a Knoxville Job Corps program. Pike was 18 at the time of the crime. The legal path to Wednesday night was itself dramatic. On Wednesday morning, a divided panel of the Sixth Circuit granted a short stay to consider her claim that evidence of severe childhood sexual abuse was never adequately considered at sentencing. Tennessee went to the Supreme Court, which vacated the stay Wednesday evening, with Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson dissenting. Officials then administered two doses of the lethal drug, but Pike’s heart was still beating, and she was taken to a hospital. Governor Bill Lee has ordered a comprehensive third-party review and said the remaining execution scheduled for this year will not go forward. Now the legal questions are unusual and difficult. The closest Supreme Court precedent is from 1947, Louisiana ex rel. Francis v. Resweber, when the state’s electric chair failed to kill Willie Francis and the Court held, 5 to 4, that Louisiana could try again without violating the Eighth Amendment. Modern lethal-injection cases like Baze v. Rees and Bucklew v. Precythe focus on whether a method creates a substantial risk of severe pain, but they don’t squarely address what happens after an execution has actually been attempted and failed. Pike’s lawyers will almost certainly argue that a second attempt would be cruel and unusual. There are also the issues that were already in the case: her age at the time of the crime, just past the line the Supreme Court drew in Roper v. Simmons barring execution for crimes committed under 18, and the abuse evidence the Sixth Circuit wanted time to examine. Whatever one’s view of the death penalty, a failed execution is exactly the kind of event the Eighth Amendment was written to make courts confront, and this case will now test what the Constitution requires when the state’s ultimate punishment doesn’t work.

Tennessee due to execute woman for first time in two centuries | Reuters · NPR · CBS News