Live Proceedings • Transcriptions • Verdicts
We will hear argument this morning in Case 24-1187, Morrison versus the Digital Securities Commission. Mr. Alderman, you may proceed.
Thank you, Chief Justice, and may it please the Court. This case presents a fundamental question about the reach of federal regulatory power in an age of decentralized technology. The Commission has asserted jurisdiction over platforms that have no central operator, no corporate headquarters, and no identifiable issuer of securities. Our position is straightforward: you cannot regulate what you cannot define, and the Commission's attempts to shoehorn decentralized protocols into a regulatory framework designed for centralized institutions represents an unprecedented expansion of administrative authority.
Counsel, isn't that precisely the argument that was made about electronic trading platforms in the 1990s? The technology was new, the framework was old, and yet the Commission adapted.
With respect, Justice Reynolds, that analogy fails at the threshold. Electronic trading platforms had identifiable operators, registered broker-dealers, and centralized order books. The protocols at issue here have none of those characteristics. They are autonomous software executing on distributed networks. Regulating them is akin to regulating the weather — one can observe it, but one cannot serve it with a subpoena.
But someone wrote that software, Mr. Alderman. Someone deployed it. Are you suggesting that the act of creating a financial instrument and releasing it into the wild absolves one of all regulatory obligation?
Supreme Court of the United States
Oral Argument in Progress
9th Circuit Court of Appeals
Cross-Examination — Witness 4
Federal Circuit
Recess — Resumes 2:00 PM
S.D.N.Y.
Opening Statements
United States Tax Court
Adjourned — Ruling Pending
D.D.C.
Government’s Closing Argument
N.D. Cal.
Recess — Jury Deliberation
WASHINGTON, D.C. — March 28, 2026
After deliberating for nine hours over two days, a federal jury found Bellweather Systems and its former CEO liable on all fourteen counts of securities fraud and market manipulation.
SAN FRANCISCO — March 25, 2026
A three-judge panel ruled unanimously that the state's warrantless bulk data collection program violates the Fourth Amendment, affirming the lower court's preliminary injunction.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — March 22, 2026
The Court agreed to take up Morrison v. Digital Securities Commission, a case that could reshape the federal government's ability to regulate decentralized financial platforms.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — March 19, 2026
In Williams Estate v. IRS, the Tax Court established new valuation principles for digital assets held in decentralized wallets, rejecting the government's retroactive pricing methodology.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — March 17, 2026
Reversing the district court, the Federal Circuit found that claims directed to quantum error correction methods are patent-eligible under the machine-or-transformation test.
NEW YORK — March 14, 2026
Judge Hernandez certified a class of over twelve thousand plaintiffs in Chen v. Metropolitan Transit Authority, finding common questions of fact predominate in the employment discrimination claims.
Courthouse.stream was founded on a simple premise: that the proceedings of justice, conducted in the people's name, deserve the same quality of reporting and immediacy that was once reserved for the great broadsheets of the twentieth century. In an era when courtroom access has been reduced to terse docket entries and secondhand summaries, this publication restores the experience of witnessing justice as it unfolds — word by word, argument by argument, ruling by ruling.
Justice must not only be done, but must be seen to be done — and in our time, to be seen means to be streamed.”
Our editorial staff monitors active proceedings across federal and state jurisdictions, providing live transcriptions enhanced with contextual metadata, historical case references, and analytical commentary. Every transcript published here is verified against official court records and annotated for clarity by our team of legal correspondents.
We believe that the architecture of legal language — its precision, its weight, its deliberate rhythm — deserves a presentation that honors its gravity. That is why courthouse.stream is built not as an app or a dashboard, but as a publication: a digital broadsheet where the words of advocates, witnesses, and judges are given the typographic care they demand.
The courtroom is the last arena where words alone decide the fate of citizens. We ensure those words are heard.”
This is not a legal database. This is not a news aggregator. This is a front-row seat to the machinery of justice, presented with the directness and typographic authority of the press at its finest.