This Day in Legal History: Ada Kepley Graduates
On June 30, 1870, Ada H. Kepley became the first woman in the United States to graduate from law school. She earned her degree from Union College of Law in Chicago, an institution later associated with Northwestern University School of Law. Kepley’s achievement came at a time when women were largely excluded from the legal profession, not only by custom but often by formal barriers to admission. Her graduation showed that women could meet the academic demands of legal education, even when courts and bar authorities were not yet ready to treat them as full members of the profession.
After earning her law degree, Kepley faced the central contradiction of the era: a woman could study law, but that did not mean she could practice it. Illinois did not yet permit women to be admitted to the bar, so her degree did not immediately translate into the professional status it would have given a man. That barrier reflected a broader legal culture that treated law as a public profession reserved for men, while assigning women to private and domestic roles. Kepley later became active in reform causes, including temperance and women’s rights, using her legal training as part of a wider campaign for social change. Her story also overlaps with the long struggle of women lawyers such as Myra Bradwell, whose exclusion from the Illinois bar reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 1873.
The issue was not simply whether one woman could become a lawyer, but whether the legal system would recognize women as independent civic actors. Kepley’s graduation therefore marked an early victory in legal education, even though the fight for professional admission continued after her. It reminds us that access to education and access to legal authority are related, but not the same. On this day in legal history, Ada Kepley’s law degree stood as both a milestone and a challenge to a profession still trying to decide who belonged inside it.
The Supreme Court ruled that President Trump could not immediately remove Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook while her legal challenge continues. In a 5–4 decision, the Court denied the government’s request to pause a lower-court order that kept Cook in office. The majority said the government had not shown it was likely to win on its argument that the president has broad, largely unchecked power to remove a Fed governor “for cause.”
The Court emphasized that the Federal Reserve is designed to be politically independent, especially because it controls monetary policy, interest rates, and other decisions that should not shift simply because a president wants different policy outcomes. The majority rejected the idea that the president’s stated reason for removal is automatically beyond judicial review. It also rejected the argument that almost any concern about a governor’s conduct, ability, or integrity is enough to satisfy the “for cause” requirement. Instead, the Court said “cause” must be meaningful and connected to whether the governor is truly unfit for the position, not just a pretext for replacing her with someone more politically aligned.
The Court ultimately resolved the stay request on a narrower ground: Cook had not received the basic process required before removal. At minimum, she was entitled to notice of the evidence against her, a chance to respond, and some deadline or procedure for doing so before a final decision was made. Because that did not happen, the Court allowed the injunction keeping her in office to remain in place. The ruling does not necessarily mean Cook wins the entire case, but it means she stays on the Fed board while the litigation continues.
The decision is a major statement that the president cannot treat Federal Reserve governors like at-will employees. It preserves the Fed’s independence, at least for now, and signals that courts can review whether a claimed “for cause” firing is legally valid.
Court prevents Trump from firing Fed governor | SCOTUSblog
The Supreme Court upheld Mississippi’s rule allowing certain absentee ballots to be counted even if they arrive after Election Day, as long as they are postmarked by Election Day and received within five business days. In a 5–4 decision, the Court reversed the Fifth Circuit and held that federal election-day laws set the deadline for when voters must make their choice, not the deadline for when election officials must physically receive the ballot.
Justice Barrett’s majority opinion treated the case as a narrow timing dispute. The challengers argued that because federal law sets a single national Election Day for federal elections, all ballots must be received by that day. The Court disagreed, explaining that the word “election” has historically referred to the voters’ act of choosing a candidate. Under that view, a voter has made the choice when the ballot is cast or mailed by the deadline, even if the ballot arrives later.
The Court also relied on federal law governing military and overseas voters, which repeatedly assumes that states can set their own ballot-receipt deadlines. That mattered because if federal election-day statutes already required all ballots to be received by Election Day, those references to state receipt deadlines would make little sense. The majority also rejected the challengers’ arguments about election integrity and voter confidence, saying those are policy arguments for legislatures, not reasons for courts to rewrite the federal statutes.
The dissent, written by Justice Alito, saw the issue differently. In his view, having an election on a particular day historically meant completing the collection of ballots on that day. He argued that the electorate’s collective choice is not fully expressed until ballots are received by election officials.
States may continue to count mail ballots that are sent by Election Day but arrive shortly afterward, unless Congress clearly says otherwise. The decision does not require every state to adopt Mississippi’s rule, but it confirms that federal Election Day statutes do not automatically ban late-arriving, timely mailed ballots.
Justices uphold state law allowing for late-arriving mail-in ballots | SCOTUSblog
In my Bloomberg column this week, I argue that Coca-Cola’s transfer pricing fight with the IRS is more than a dispute over one company’s tax bill. It is an early stress test for what tax administration looks like after the Supreme Court’s 2024 decision in Loper Bright, which ended Chevron deference and gave courts more power to decide what ambiguous statutes mean. Coca-Cola is trying to use that shift to challenge a major Tax Court loss, arguing that part of the IRS’s victory depended on regulatory deference that no longer exists. The company has already paid roughly $6 billion, and its total exposure could be far higher, so the stakes are enormous.
The underlying tax issue involves transfer pricing, or how related companies price transactions between themselves. The IRS says Coca-Cola’s foreign affiliates paid too little for the right to use the company’s valuable trademarks, formulas, and other intangible property, which left too much profit overseas and too little taxable income in the United States. Coca-Cola’s argument focuses in part on “blocked income,” where foreign law limits what a local affiliate can pay to a foreign parent. The IRS says Section 482 gives it broad authority to reallocate income to prevent tax avoidance, even when foreign payment restrictions are involved. Coca-Cola says the IRS regulation supporting that position was upheld in a world where courts deferred to agencies, and that world is now gone.
I’m not arguing that Coca-Cola is necessarily wrong. The IRS can overreach, and courts should not automatically uphold tax regulations just because the tax code is complicated. But I do argue that the post-Chevron shift may have a strong distributional tilt toward large corporations, especially multinationals with the money and incentive to reopen old disputes or press aggressive refund claims. If Coca-Cola succeeds, other companies will likely look for similar arguments, particularly in areas of international tax where Treasury regulations have long depended on broad statutory language and judicial deference.
What I think Treasury and the IRS should do now is take inventory. They need to identify which regulations were built on assumptions of deference, which parts of the transfer pricing system are most vulnerable, and which international tax rules are most load-bearing. Congress also has a choice to make, even if it makes that choice by doing nothing: should Treasury write the practical operating rules for multinational taxation, or should federal judges decide those questions case by case? The key point of my column is that statutory ambiguity did not disappear when Chevron died; it simply moved from agencies to courts.
Coca-Cola Transfer Pricing Fight Is a Post-Chevron Stress Test
