This report discusses Justice Antonin Scalia's last opinion for the court (Kansas v. Carr). There, the Court reversed two decisions of the Kansas Supreme Court and held that "the Eighth Amendment [does not] require... capital-sentencing courts to instruct the jury that mitigating circumstances need not be proved beyond a reasonable doubt." It also held that the Eighth Amendment did not require separate trials for two of the defendants in one of the Kansas cases.

This report discusses the Supreme Court case of "Patchak v. Zinke" and its relevance to Congress. It begins by briefly describing the Court's prior attempts to demarcate the boundaries of Congress's power to take cases away from the federal judiciary. It then discusses the facts and opinions in Patchak and analyzes the effect Patchak may have on Congress's legislative objectives.