Plain-language answers to common legal and civic questions, with links to authoritative sources. Not legal advice.
An intervenor is a non-party who gets court permission to join an existing lawsuit because the outcome could affect its interests; in federal court, Rule 24 governs intervention of right and permissive intervention.
No. On October 7, 2026, Canada said it will indefinitely suspend plans to extend medical assistance in dying to people whose sole condition is mental illness, which had been set for March 2027.
The Supreme Court opened its October 2026 term on October 5 with arguments in a Boulder climate-damages case against Suncor and ExxonMobil and a veterans disability-benefits case.
U.S. securities regulation rests on major federal statutes the Securities and Exchange Commission administers. Landmark examples include the Securities Act of 1933 (often called the “truth in securities” law), which requires disclosure for public offerings and bars fraud in the sale of securities, and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, which created the SEC and … Read more
Yes. On October 2, 2026, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone issued a preliminary injunction temporarily blocking the Trump administration from building border barriers and related infrastructure across Texas’s Big Bend sector, including Big Bend National Park. The order covers the roughly 500-mile Big Bend sector along the Rio Grande and stays federal waivers that had … Read more
Yes. On Thursday, U.S. District Judge David Leibowitz in Miami dismissed a federal case against Chelsea Cox, a Florida resident charged with illegally voting in the 2020 presidential election, ruling that a federal law criminalizing voting by noncitizens violates the U.S. Constitution. Leibowitz held that only individual states—not Congress—have authority to set voter qualifications. Because … Read more
The U.S. legislative branch is Congress: a 435-member House and 100-member Senate that together make federal law under Article I.
Yes. On October 1, 2026, a Southern District of New York final ruling struck down ICE’s mass immigration courthouse arrest policy nationwide as arbitrary and capricious.
Yes. On October 1, 2026, DOJ’s Civil Rights Division found UCLA Law discriminated against white and Asian applicants in 2023–2025 admissions, citing Title VI and SFFA v. Harvard.
Yes. On September 30, 2026, Tennessee attempted to carry out the execution of Christa Pike, the only woman on the state’s death row, after the U.S. Supreme Court vacated a temporary appeals-court stay. According to filings by her lawyers and accounts from media witnesses, officials administered two syringes of lethal-injection chemicals, but Pike remained alive, … Read more