Patricia Zapor - Catholic News Service

Among issues followed by the Catholic legal community, the contraceptive mandate in the Affordable Care Act is likely to be back. Also making return outings in the term opening Oct. 5 are cases involving the details of the death penalty and state laws intended to limit abortions.

Less than a week after Pope Francis told a joint meeting of Congress that he backs U.S. efforts to abolish the death penalty, news came of his U.S. nuncio’s letters to authorities in two states appealing on the pope’s behalf to commute death sentences.

The synod “needs to be looking at the ways poverty undermines families,” said Maryann Cusimano Love, associate professor of international relations at The Catholic University of America. “Healthy families need women who can support them,” yet women overwhelmingly make up some of the most poorly paid sectors of the U.S. economy, such as waiting tables, and serving as health aids.

Order requires release of children in for-profit detention centers “without unnecessary delay”

Jeanne Atkinson, executive director of the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, said that the Justice Department’s response “represents a continued defense of the inhumane practice of family detention.”

A federal judge ruled July 24 that the government’s immigrant family detention system violates a settlement agreement dating to 1997 over how juveniles in the custody of the immigration agency are treated.

In another in a series of bitterly divided end-of-term cases, the Supreme Court June 29 upheld the execution protocol used by Oklahoma and several other states.The 5-4 ruling written by Justice Samuel Alito upheld lower courts that said the use of the drug midazolam in lethal injection does not viol

In a landmark ruling, a divided Supreme Court June 26 said same-sex marriage is constitutional nationwide."The nature of marriage is that, through its enduring bond, two persons together can find other freedoms, such as expression, intimacy, and spirituality," wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy