SCOTUS & the US courts December 2020- May 2022

Lawfare
See also: SCOTUS and the US courts
SCOTUS, Trump & the US courts

11 May
Assessing the Claims in the Alito Draft Opinion Overturning Roe
(NYT) The leaked draft opinion suggesting the Supreme Court is poised to overturn Roe v. Wade cited claims frequently made by opponents of abortion. The opinion, written by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., at times presents those assertions as indisputable facts while omitting context and counterarguments.
In the nearly 100-page decision, Justice Alito made or quoted assertions about fetal development, abortion procedures and international laws that have been disputed or are open to interpretation.
Here is a fact check.

Heather Cox Richardson May 5, 2022
Fallout continues over the leaked draft decision of the Supreme Court in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the draft overturning Roe v. Wade.
Tonight, in addition to the “non-scalable” fence erected last night, Capitol Police are placing concrete barricades around the United States Supreme Court.
In today’s context, it seems worth noting that in 2014, the Supreme Court struck down a Massachusetts law mandating a 35-foot buffer zone around clinics providing abortion services, on the grounds that such buffer zones infringe on the First Amendment’s right to protest.

2-4 May
Supreme Court Weighs Future Role and Final Word on Abortion
(NYT) Many are wondering if the leaked draft opinion on the contentious issue of Roe v. Wade signals a new, more politicized Supreme Court. The final opinion isn’t expected until summer, but many states are already moving forward with plans to outlaw or protect abortion.
Draft abortion opinion puts new spotlight on confirmation hearings
Supreme Court nominees told senators they saw Roe as reaffirmed precedent. Now they appear ready to overturn it.
The Supreme Court’s Legitimacy Crisis Is Here
Nicholas Reed Langen
(Project Syndicate) With its looming decision to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling, the US Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority has abandoned any pretense of acting as a neutral arbiter of the law. America’s rancorous partisan politics have fully infected the Court, which is quickly descending into theocratic extremism.
Frank Bruni: Four Reasons the End of Roe v. Wade Terrifies Me
The Supreme Court’s stature has been profoundly and perhaps irrevocably diminished.
Overturning Roe will exacerbate an egregious divide.
We’re devolving further into minority rule.
We were already on the edge. This could push us over.
What Was the Strategy Behind the Supreme Court Leak?
(NYT) …there is the evidence against the conservative-leaker scenario. First, the leak did not go to The Journal or an avowedly conservative media source; it went to reporters at Politico, an unofficially nonideological but, from a conservative perspective, functionally liberal outlet.
Second, as the court has moved rightward, the climate in the left-leaning part of the elite legal world (which is to say, most of it) has become much more self-consciously activist and anti-institutionalist than the climate among, say, Federalist Society types — meaning that if you were betting on a big act of institutional sabotage right now, you would bet on it coming from the left. (And indeed, the leaker was swiftly praised by prominent voices on liberal-legal Twitter.)
Third, you can imagine various possible rationales for a liberal leak. At the most basic level, there might be the hope that seeing the inevitable backlash unfold now, while the ruling can still change, could make a figure like Kavanaugh waver further, rather than locking in his vote.
Then, too, to the extent that liberals hope abortion could be a galvanizing issue — for organizing and fund-raising as well as votes — in a midterm election that’s otherwise shaping up disastrously for the Democrats, the leaker might see this as giving his or her side a head start, by encouraging the new Resistance to get to work a month early.
Supreme Court has voted to overturn abortion rights, draft opinion shows
“We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,” Justice Alito writes in an initial majority draft circulated inside the court.
(Politico) The draft opinion is a full-throated, unflinching repudiation of the 1973 decision which guaranteed federal constitutional protections of abortion rights and a subsequent 1992 decision – Planned Parenthood v. Casey – that largely maintained the right. “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start,” Alito writes.
The immediate impact of the ruling as drafted in February would be to end a half-century guarantee of federal constitutional protection of abortion rights and allow each state to decide whether to restrict or ban abortion. It’s unclear if there have been subsequent changes to the draft.
Deliberations on controversial cases have in the past been fluid. Justices can and sometimes do change their votes as draft opinions circulate and major decisions can be subject to multiple drafts and vote-trading, sometimes until just days before a decision is unveiled. The court’s holding will not be final until it is published, likely in the next two months.

13 April
Roberts Has Lost Control of the Supreme Court
Chief Justice Roberts voted with Justices Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagan in dissenting from six previous shadow docket rulings. But the Clean Water Act dispute was the first time he joined in the procedural criticism that the other conservatives were not just using the shadow docket but abusing it.
(NYT) The term “shadow docket” was introduced by the University of Chicago law professor Will Baude in 2015 to describe the more obscure part of the Supreme Court’s work — the thousands of unsigned and usually unexplained orders that the justices issue each year to manage their docket. Those orders are in contrast to the merits docket, the 60 to 70 cases each year that go through rounds of briefing and oral argument before being resolved in long, signed opinions for the court.
…far more than ever before, the court is using procedural orders on applications for emergency relief while appeals work their way through the courts to resolve disputes affecting the lives of millions of Americans. … Time and again, the justices are ordering lower courts to treat these decisions as precedents — even when, as in last week’s ruling, the order includes no analysis to apply to other cases, which often makes the precedent difficult for lower courts to apply.
Unsurprisingly, these rulings have provoked increasingly strident dissents from the court’s liberal justices.

7 April
Jackson Confirmed as First Black Woman to Sit on Supreme Court
(NYT) The vote was a bipartisan rejection of Republican attempts to paint her as a liberal extremist who had coddled criminals.
Overcoming a concerted effort by Republicans to sully her record and derail her nomination, Judge Jackson was confirmed on a 53-to-47 vote, with three Republicans joining all 50 members of the Democratic caucus in backing her.
The vote was a rejection of Republican attempts to paint her as a liberal extremist who had coddled criminals. Dismissing those portrayals as distorted and offensive, Judge Jackson’s backers saw the confirmation as an uplifting occasion for the Senate and a mark of how far the country had come.
Judge Jackson, whose parents attended segregated schools, has two degrees from Harvard University and, at 51, is now in line to replace Justice Stephen G. Breyer when he retires at the end of the court’s session this summer, making her a justice in waiting.
Heather Cox Richardson: “It is likely that Justice Jackson will largely write dissents as her colleagues dismantle the legal frameworks that have shaped modern America. The ones currently on the table are the rights to abortion, marriage across racial lines, birth control, and gay marriage, but it is not only civil rights that are at risk. So are business regulation and protections for workers and consumers, and a decision last night suggests that the current Supreme Court will not defer to states when right-wing principles are at stake.
By a 5 to 4 decision, the court last night limited the power of states to stop big development projects that state officials worry will hurt the state’s environment. It did so under the so-called “shadow docket,” a system, rarely used in the past but now a key part of the court’s decision-making process, in which the court hands down decisions on an emergency basis without briefings or written decisions, so we have no idea on what grounds they are making their ruling. The American Petroleum Institute, the Interstate National Gas Association of America, and the National Hydropower Association all applauded the decision.”

4 April
Not long ago, Supreme Court confirmations were far less partisan
The confirmation battle shows how much more partisan Supreme Court nominations have become in recent decades. The late Justice Antonin Scalia, nominated by President Ronald Reagan, was confirmed 98 to 0 in 1986. The late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, nominated by President Bill Clinton, was confirmed 96 to 3 in 1993.
The first Jewish justice was also the first to face confirmation hearings
Until 1916, Congress didn’t conduct public hearings on Supreme Court nominees. That changed when President Woodrow Wilson nominated Boston lawyer Louis D. Brandeis to be the high court’s first Jewish justice. …unlike Jackson, Brandeis didn’t have to face a barrage of questions, because he wasn’t present at the proceedings. The hearings also lasted four months.

25-26 March
Manchin says he will support Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson
(NPR) The West Virginia Democrat has become a pivotal vote in the evenly divided Senate, as he often sides with Republicans, and his opposition could have blocked Jackson from becoming the first Black woman to sit on the bench.

Does the Supreme Court Deserve Ketanji Brown Jackson?
(New York) Over the past three years, the number of Americans who told Pew they had a favorable view of the court has declined by 15 points, driven by Democrats who have begun to say they believe that the court is too powerful and too conservative. (Probably not a coincidence that in the same interval, Brett Kavanaugh eclipsed Ruth Bader Ginsburg as the best-known justice.) The Washington Post’s reporting on rabid, QAnon-inflected texts from Ginni Thomas to the White House chief of staff Mark Meadows urging him to overthrow the 2020 election, a matter her husband Justice Clarence Thomas was actively ruling on, is unlikely to improve the court’s standing.
Jackson, meanwhile, is tied with Chief Justice John Roberts in a Gallup poll for most popular nominee to the Court, and that was before the country even saw her respond with dignity and substance to the fulminating of presidential upstarts.

24-25 March
Legal Scholars Are Shocked By Ginni Thomas’s “Stop the Steal” Texts
Several experts say that Thomas’s husband, the Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, must recuse himself from any case related to the 2020 election.
By Jane Mayer
The texts don’t just indicate Ginni Thomas’s efforts to scheme with high-level Trump Administration figures; they expose her belief in baseless conspiracy theories.
(The New Yorker) Several of the country’s most respected legal scholars say that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas must immediately recuse himself from any cases relating to the 2020 election and its aftermath, now that it has been revealed that his wife, Virginia (Ginni) Thomas, colluded extensively with a top White House adviser about overturning Joe Biden’s victory over then President Donald Trump.
Opinion: Justice Thomas’s wife is a political extremist. This is now a problem for the court.
(WaPo Editorial Board) … The disturbing revelations only deepen the threat her entanglements pose to the court’s legitimacy. … This raises questions about Justice Thomas’s refusal to recuse himself from cases involving Jan. 6. In one text, Ms. Thomas talked about having a conversation with her “best friend,” apparently about the election fight. Did Ms. Thomas influence her husband’s thinking? Did Justice Thomas decline to recuse because he did not want to reveal the depth of his wife’s involvement? Justice Thomas was the only member of the court who voted against turning over White House communications to the committee.
Virginia Thomas urged White House chief to pursue unrelenting efforts to overturn the 2020 election, texts show
In messages to Chief of Staff Mark Meadows in the weeks after Election Day, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas called Biden’s victory “the greatest Heist of our History” and told him that President Donald Trump should not concede.
By Bob Woodward and Robert Costa
(WaPo) Virginia Thomas, a conservative activist married to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, repeatedly pressed White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to pursue unrelenting efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election in a series of urgent text exchanges in the critical weeks after the vote, according to copies of the messages obtained by The Washington Post and CBS News.Virginia Thomas urged White House chief to pursue unrelenting efforts to overturn the 2020 election, texts show
In messages to Chief of Staff Mark Meadows in the weeks after Election Day, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas called Biden’s victory “the greatest Heist of our History” and told him that President Donald Trump should not concede.

2 March
Dana Milbank: The Supreme Court gets a taste of its own medicine
Last week, on the very day President Biden announced his nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) issued a statement expressing his earnest concern that “Judge Jackson was the favored choice of far-left dark-money groups.”
McConnell complaining about dark money is like Russian President Vladimir Putin complaining about cruise missiles. And the absurdity doesn’t end there. Leading the kvetching about dark-money groups supporting Jackson? Dark-money groups on the right that are spending millions in dark money to oppose Jackson.

25-28 February
Ruth Marcus: I’ve covered the Supreme Court for years. Here’s what to know about Jackson’s nomination.
Jackson’s experience as a criminal defense lawyer, member of the U.S. Sentencing Commission and trial court judge gives her a perspective different from that of her colleagues. It’s reasonable to imagine Jackson emerging as an ally of Justice Sonia Sotomayor, especially on criminal law issues, where Breyer and Justice Elena Kagan have been slightly more moderate. And, as I wrote the other day, she also could emerge as another powerful voice in dissent, joining Sotomayor and Kagan in a forcefulness and passion that Breyer didn’t always display.
Biden nominates Ketanji Brown Jackson to become first Black woman on supreme court
White House praises ‘exceptionally qualified nominee’
Jackson, if confirmed, will replace retiring Stephen Breyer
Speaking from the Cross Hall of the White House, the president introduced the 51-year-old Jackson to the nation as “the daughter of former public school teachers” and a “proven consensus-builder” who has displayed “a pragmatic understanding that the law must work for the American people”.
Her nomination comes exactly two years to the day after Biden, then struggling miserably in his third campaign for the presidency, vowed to nominate a Black woman to the supreme court if elected president.
Across her broad legal career, Jackson worked as a public defender, an experience that sets her apart from most judges sitting on the federal bench. She previously served as vice-chair of the US Sentencing Commission, where she focused on reducing sentencing disparities as part of the agency’s work setting sentencing guidelines in federal criminal cases.

22 February
The Long Crusade of Clarence and Ginni Thomas
The Supreme Court justice and his wife battled for years for a more conservative America. New reporting shows how far she was willing to go after Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss.
(NYT Magazine) The Thomases have long posed a unique quandary in Washington. Because Supreme Court justices do not want to be perceived as partisan, they tend to avoid political events and entanglements, and their spouses often keep low profiles. But the Thomases have defied such norms. Since the founding of the nation, no spouse of a sitting Supreme Court justice has been as overt a political activist as Ginni Thomas. In addition to her perch at the Council for National Policy, she founded a group called Groundswell with the support of Stephen K. Bannon, the hard-line nationalist and former Trump adviser. It holds a weekly meeting of influential conservatives, many of whom work directly on issues that have come before the court.

7 February
Supreme Court in crisis: Justices keep digging themselves deeper
(The Hill) The court’s approval rating among Americans keeps falling, with accelerating perceptions of its partisan decision-making, combined with its lack of transparency.
Grinnell College National Poll Director Peter Hanson has described the public’s loss of confidence in the Supreme Court as the “nightmare scenario for Chief Justice John Roberts, who has sought to protect the court’s reputation as an apolitical institution.”
Since the individual justices are not taking steps to address this serious threat to the court, it’s time for Roberts to step into the breach.
On Feb. 2, three days before Justice Gorsuch’s appearance at the Disney property, 25 legal ethics scholars wrote to the Chief Justice and asked him to do just that. They called on him impose a code of ethical conduct on members of the high court. Judges on every lower court are bound by such a code, but at present the Supreme Court is excluded.
The 25 ethicists wrote that rules of professional conduct for the court would help it “transparently address potential conflicts and other issues in a way that builds public trust in the institution.”
The Chief Justice needs to take this long overdue step and make justices’ speech making subject to those rules.

2 February
Biden’s first-year judicial appointments—prospects for 2022 and beyond
The first and second posts in this mini-series described how President Biden’s 42 first-year district and court of appeals confirmations are second only to President Kennedy’s.
(Brookings) Biden used early and tactical nominations and had (and needed) a united, filibuster-free Senate majority. His appointees filled proportionately more judgeships than most recent presidents and showed striking demographic and vocational diversity.
Despite the conventional sense that presidents get less done as mid-term elections loom, all recent presidents, except Kennedy, have appointed at least as many judges in their second year as in their first. Most recent presidents, however, had meager first-year numbers.
How many second-year confirmations Biden achieves and how much he changes the judiciary’s make-up depends on how many pending nominees get confirmed, how many current and future vacancies get filled, and which judges create the vacancies. It is hard to say, as explained later, whether filling Justice Breyer’s vacancy will slow the pace of lower court confirmations.

28 January
The résumé line Biden loves in judges
(Politico Nightly) In his first year in office, President Joe Biden nominated 81 people to become federal judges, and 42 of them were confirmed by the Senate. They don’t look like the average federal judge: Only 31 percent of the judges confirmed under Biden are white, and only 21 percent are men, according to the American Constitution Society . Nearly 72 percent of sitting federal judges are white, and almost 65 percent of them are men.
As striking as those numbers are, when Nightly asked three experts who follow the courts closely what else they have noticed about Biden’s judicial selections — a hint about what his first nominee for the Supreme Court might have on her résumé — they all pointed to the same thing: career diversity.
An unprecedented number of Biden’s judges have experience as public defenders.

26 January
Justice Stephen G. Breyer will retire at the end of the current Supreme Court term, according to a person familiar with his plans, giving President Biden a chance to reinforce the court’s liberal minority and make good on his campaign pledge to make history by nominating the first African American female justice.
The current term concludes at the end of June.

21 January
Is Ginni Thomas a Threat to the Supreme Court?
Behind closed doors, Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife is working with many groups directly involved in controversial cases before the Court.
(The New Yorker) In December, Chief Justice John Roberts released his year-end report on the federal judiciary. According to a recent Gallup poll, the Supreme Court has its lowest public-approval rating in history—in part because it is viewed as being overly politicized. President Joe Biden recently established a bipartisan commission to consider reforms to the Court, and members of Congress have introduced legislation that would require Justices to adhere to the same types of ethics standards as other judges. Roberts’s report, however, defiantly warned everyone to back off. “The Judiciary’s power to manage its internal affairs insulates courts from inappropriate political influence,” he wrote. His statement followed a series of defensive speeches from members of the Court’s conservative wing, which now holds a super-majority of 6–3. Last fall, Justice Clarence Thomas, in an address at Notre Dame, accused the media of spreading the false notion that the Justices are merely politicians in robes. Such criticism, he said, “makes it sound as though you are just always going right to your personal preference,” adding, “They think you become like a politician!”
The claim that the Justices’ opinions are politically neutral is becoming increasingly hard to accept, especially from Thomas, whose wife, Virginia (Ginni) Thomas, is a vocal right-wing activist

13 January
Supreme Court halts Biden policy creating COVID-19 vaccine or test rules for U.S. businesses
(PBS) In a 6-3 decision on Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court said the Biden administration overstepped its authority by mandating that large companies require their employees either to get vaccinated against COVID-19 or test regularly to work in-person. In the case, the National Federation of Independent Businesses argued against the federal government, saying that employers with 100 workers or more cannot tell employees to get vaccinated, even if that puts other employees at risk. In their majority decision, the justices said, “Although Congress has indisputably given OSHA the power to regulate occupational dangers, it has not given that agency the power to regulate public health more broadly.”
In a dissenting opinion, Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan said, “As disease and death continue to mount, this Court tells the agency that it cannot respond in the most effective way possible.”
In a separate 5-4 decision, the court said that workers at health care facilities that receive federal funding must yield to a vaccine mandate. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined with the liberal justices to form a majority in the decision.

2021

1 December
Dana Milbank: ‘Roe’ is dead. The Roberts Court’s ‘stench’ will live forever.
A deeply partisan majority on the Roberts Court is about to enshrine a new principle in American jurisprudence: Justice for he who yells the loudest.
The six Republican-appointed justices on the Supreme Court left no doubt in oral argument Wednesday that they would end the constitutional right to abortion that American women have had for nearly half a century. The court will either overturn Roe v. Wade outright or cripple the landmark ruling by eliminating the “fetal viability” standard at its core. Both would return us to a time before most people living ever knew, when state legislatures controlled women’s reproductive decisions.
Jennifer Rubin: The Supreme Court faces an existential crisis of legitimacy
We are, in short, on the verge of a constitutional and political tsunami. What was settled, predictable law on which millions of people relied will likely be tossed aside. The blowback likely will be ferocious. It may not be what Republicans intended. But it is coming.
Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor said it better than any of the court’s external critics. “Will this institution survive the stench this creates in the public perception, that the Constitution and its reading are just political acts?” she asked during oral arguments on Mississippi’s abortion law on Wednesday.. “If people believe this is all politics, how will we survive? How will this court survive?”
She was referring to the apparent willingness of the court to overthrow precedent simply because its membership changed. (The usual reasons for overriding precedent — such as new facts or an evolving social consensus — do not apply in this case.)
As the solicitor general and the counsel for the Center of Reproductive Rights argued, this is the first time in history that the court will rip up decades of precedent to take away a fundamental personal right.

3 November
The Supreme Court Wonders Where the Texas Abortion Law Might Lead
In order to trample on reproductive rights, S.B. 8 tramples on all rights.
By Amy Davidson Sorkin
The Texas law allows almost anyone anywhere in the United States to pursue a claim of at least ten thousand dollars against anyone in Texas who they believe has “aided or abetted” in any abortion performed or induced after six weeks of pregnancy. The person who has the abortion can’t be sued, but the potential defendants include anyone who, say, helped a friend financially, or gave her a ride to a clinic. Any defendants who lost would pay the bounty, along with the bounty hunter’s legal fees. Any defendants who win—which is not easy because, under the law, they bear the burden of proof by a preponderance of evidence, meaning that the bounty hunter has to show only a fifty-per-cent chance that a defendant had aided someone in obtaining an abortion—cannot recover their own fees. And they can be sued again, and again, and again, until someone gets the bounty. The legal fees can add up—and ten thousand dollars is just the minimum that a judge can award.

17 October
Biden’s Supreme Court commission has good ideas. But the court’s problems run deeper.
The court’s problems are not easily solved by structural reform. They are a function of the rise of a highly authoritarian right-wing that seeks to impose its will by any means possible — including by confirming partisan judges who lack the restraint required for responsible adjudication. When an entire political movement no longer values norms, comity or compromise, our institutions decay and lose credibility. The court’s fundamental disconnect from the American people is inevitable when justices are appointed by presidents elected by a minority of the electorate (via the anti-democratic electoral college) and confirmed by a Senate in which red states with small populations exercise disproportionate power.
(WaPo) what is clear from the commission’s release of a draft report is that institutional changes cannot spare us from hyperpartisan appointees who lack self-awareness and honesty about their innate partisan biases.
The commission nevertheless offers some sage observations. On the question of court expansion, this draft recounts that the current controversy arises in part because of the Senate’s conduct… Democrats’ outrage over “stolen seats” resulted in calls to essentially get those seats back by court expansion.
The commission finds that Congress has “broad power” to expand or shrink the court. As to the wisdom of doing so, the commission gently suggests the risks of expansion are “considerable,” threatening the legitimacy of the court.
When it comes to term limits, the commission is much more positive, arguing that such a reform would remove the element of “luck” as to who can appoint justices. It would also end the strategic retirement game and give older judges a shot at seats that presidents typically fill with young nominees. The commission offers several ways of constructing the staggered terms and addressing the duties of justices who cycle off the court.

3-9 October
Maureen Dowd: The Supreme Court v. Reality
The once august court’s approval ratings on fairness were already falling two decades ago. The bloom came off the robe in 2000, when the court threw the game on Bush v. Gore, voting 5 to 4 to stop the Florida recount and anoint a Republican president.
If we conjure an alternative-history look at America, consider all the things that the Supreme Court brought down on our heads by pre-emptively purloining that victory for George W. Bush: two interminable and inexplicable wars, costing so many lives and so many trillions; a descent into torture; the villainous Dick Cheney.
Al Gore, mocked as “Ozone Man” by Bush senior, certainly would have tried to head off the biblical floods and fires engulfing our country.
The right-wing justices may as well embrace their reputation for hackery. Because in this blockbuster year, when the conservative court begins debating abortion and the Second Amendment, one thing is certain: They are going to make rulings that will drive people crazy, rulings that will be out of sync with what most Americans believe.
The Supreme Court Has Gone Off the Rails
Donald Ayer. a U.S. attorney and principal deputy solicitor general in the Reagan administration and deputy attorney general in the George H.W. Bush administration
(NYT Opinion) The Supreme Court has final authority to make difficult judgment calls articulating the powers of government and the limits and constraints upon them. To merit the public trust, these judgments must not appear simply as assertions of individual value choices by the justices or willy-nilly discard long-established court precedents that profoundly affect people’s lives. Nor should they actively undermine the ability of governments to advance public purposes as established by a fair democratic process.
As the court begins a new term, regrettably, its recent history suggests that it lacks a majority of justices with sufficient concern about the basic continuity and integrity of the law or the ability of government to function.
[In the 1980s] The Reagan revolution pitted itself against “activist” judges who were seen as following personal whims by altering the law and creating rights not found in the Constitution. Through interpretive tools like textualism and originalism, the Reagan lawyers sought to make the law more predictable and steady
That revolution, however, has morphed into what it was meant to curtail, as the expanding right-wing majority on the Supreme Court has relied on an array of innovative constitutional rights to undermine traditional governmental actions while discarding longstanding precedents with which they disagree.

Back on the Bench, the Supreme Court Faces a Blockbuster Term
The court, which is dominated by six Republican appointees, will confront a charged docket, including a case asking it to overrule Roe v. Wade.
A transformed Supreme Court returns to the bench on Monday to start a momentous term in which it will consider eliminating the constitutional right to abortion, vastly expanding gun rights and further chipping away at the wall separating church and state.
The highly charged docket will test the leadership of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who lost his position at the court’s ideological center with the arrival last fall of Justice Amy Coney Barrett. He is now outflanked by five justices to his right, limiting his ability to guide the court toward the consensus and incrementalism he has said he prefers.

15 September
The Roberts Court is Dying. Here’s What Comes Next.
With the chief justice increasingly sidelined, the Supreme Court’s new majority has an aggressive strategy to cement a conservative agenda.
(Politico) …while the chief justice hasn’t fully lost his hold on the court, what comes next is quickly coming into view. The post-Roberts Court is likely to be unfettered by legalistic norms and eager to advance changes to the law that both embed conservative policy goals and tilt the election system toward the GOP. It’s a combination that poses a real threat to American democracy.
Signs of Roberts’ waning influence abound. In the Supreme Court term that ended last July, the (more conservative) Justice Brett Kavanaugh was in the majority in 97 percent of all cases, and 95 percent of divided cases; the chief managed only 91 percent and 84 percent respectively. Kavanaugh also cast the decisive vote in the denial of a nationwide injunction against the Center for Disease Control’s eviction moratorium in July. Robert’s vote to let stand California’s and New York’s Covid regulations as applied to churches were in dissents. He was again outvoted by his five more conservative peers, including Kavanaugh.

14 September
In overturning the eviction moratorium, the Supreme Court continues its history of harming Black households
Carl Romer and Kristen Broady
(Brookings)  Last month, the Supreme Court rejected the Biden administration’s attempt to extend the nationwide moratorium on evictions during the COVID-19 pandemic. In Alabama Association of Realtors v. Department of Health and Human Services, the court ruled that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) eviction moratorium exceeded the agency’s authority. As a result, evictions have restarted, with evicted parents being separated from their children while entire communities are likely to see increased COVID-19 diagnoses.
…the judiciary is—by definition—the most thoroughly undemocratic branch of government, and has long been a locus of reactionary and illiberal decisionmaking. For this reason, many have argued that, even when the courts do allow substantive social change, reformers’ efforts are better spent pushing legislative action.

1-4 September
Adam Serwer: Five Justices Did This Because They Could
Emergency appeals have become the tool of choice for the conservative movement.
(The Atlantic) “Last night, the Court silently acquiesced in a State’s enactment of a law that flouts nearly 50 years of federal precedents,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her dissent. “​​The Court should not be so content to ignore its constitutional obligations to protect not only the rights of women, but also the sanctity of its precedents and of the rule of law.”
Under normal procedure, cases take time to work their way through the lower courts, and are received at the Supreme Court with extensive records, briefs, and oral arguments. Ideally, this allows the justices to ensure that their hugely consequential decisions are properly informed and made as carefully as possible, weighing all the relevant legal and constitutional issues. But there are some circumstances in which the Court needs to act quickly to prevent some imminent or irreversible harm. There’s nothing inherently sinister about that. The shadow docket, though, now resembles a venue where the conservative legal movement can get speedy service from its friends on the Court.
Texas Abortion Case Highlights Concern Over Supreme Court’s ‘Shadow Docket’
A process intended to help the court deal with emergency petitions and routine matters has grown into a backdoor way of making major policy decisions.
Biden blasts Supreme Court refusal to block Texas abortion ban; Pelosi vows vote on House bill to ensure abortion access
(WaPo) Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. joined the court’s three liberals to say he would have kept the law from being implemented while the legality of the law was weighed in court. He described the Texas statute’s enforcement plan as “not only unusual, but unprecedented” and said it deserved more exacting judicial scrutiny.
Ruth Marcus: The Supreme Court aids and abets Texas in violating women’s constitutional rights
Congratulations, Texas, you did it. You figured out a way to write an antiabortion law that everyone agrees is unconstitutional under current law — and to ensure that the women whose rights are being violated don’t have the ability to challenge it in court.
And a five-justice Supreme Court majority, instead of slapping down this end run around the Constitution and the judicial process, is happily aiding and abetting it.
Late Wednesday night, the court announced it would not block the new Texas law while the legal challenge made its way through the federal courts. Amazing, even for this conservative court. It’s a sad day for women, but also for the rule of law.
Supreme Court Lets Texas Ban Abortion With Vigilante Justice
By Ed Kilgore
(New York) In what three dissenting justices appropriately called a “stunning” decision, a 5-4 majority of the Supreme Court denied a petition to strike down a Texas law banning abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. As a result, Texas has prohibited the vast majority of what have been constitutionally protected abortions since 1973’s Roe v. Wade. That it was done in an unsigned order issued at midnight, with no oral arguments at any level of the federal courts, is appropriate in a twisted way. The decision will go down in history as a judicial Pearl Harbor and a day of infamy.
The law in question was ingeniously designed by Texas Republicans to evade interdiction by the courts by making individual citizens, not the government, the enforcement mechanism for the law, giving them bounties to snitch on clinics and even on “abetters” of abortions after six weeks of pregnancy (at a time when many women do not even realize they are pregnant).
The majority’s order (supported without individual elaboration by Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett) basically accepted the trick Texas played in pretending the state was not creating and enforcing an abortion ban. The order might as well have concluded with the words “well played”
Sen. Collins repeatedly asserted that Kavanaugh considered abortion rights settled law. The justice’s decision on Texas’s restrictive law suggests otherwise.
Collins’s support for Kavanaugh — and her insistence that he would uphold Roe — was crucial in installing then-President Donald Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court as the Senate confirmed him by one of the narrowest margins in history, a near party-line 50-to-48 vote.

6 July
The Supreme Court inches closer to a press freedom showdown
Charles Lane
(WaPo Opinion) At the Supreme Court, today’s lonely dissenting opinion sometimes grows into tomorrow’s constitutional law. …  So take note of Justice Neil M. Gorsuch’s 11-page dissent on the last day of the just-completed term, in which he argues that the court should have heard a challenge to its 1964 landmark holding in New York Times v. Sullivan.
For more than half a century, the Times precedent has protected press freedom — and the robust public debate that it enables — by making it extremely hard for public officials and public figures to win libel suits against the media. The Times decision permits even untrue and defamatory statements as long as they were published unintentionally or at least without “reckless disregard” for the facts. … Gorsuch’s opinion …adopted a more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger tone. It focused not on the alleged bias of all-powerful networks and newspapers but on the hapless inability of these financially challenged legacy news organizations to uphold journalistic standards as they compete for clicks with upstart social-media rivals.
… Gorsuch’s opinion draws heavily on a new law review article by professor David A. Logan of the Roger Williams University School of Law, which bluntly faulted Times for “frustrating a basic requirement of a healthy democracy: the development of a set of broadly agreed-upon facts.”

1 July
Paul Waldman: The Supreme Court’s new ruling confirms it’s the enemy of democracy
(WaPo) To no one’s surprise, the Supreme Court’s six conservatives on Thursday ruled for Republicans in a pair of key voting rights matters, upholding two Arizona voter suppression laws. It’s part of the long-running partnership between Republicans in the states, Republicans in Congress and Republicans on the Supreme Court to make sure that the rules of American elections are twisted and contorted to give the GOP every possible advantage.
At issue was a section of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), which was once the crown jewel of U.S. voting law and a foundation of political equality, that has been gutted by a Supreme Court unremittingly hostile to voting rights.
Supreme Court upholds Arizona voting laws that lower court found were unfair to minorities
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote the opinion in the 6-to-3 ruling, with the court’s conservative majority in charge. The court’s liberals joined an opinion by Justice Elena Kagan protesting that the decision weakens the shield provided by the Voting Rights Act (VRA), first passed in 1965 to forbid laws that result in discrimination based on race.
Both supporters and detractors of the decision said that it would probably strengthen the hand of state legislatures that say tighter voting laws are necessary to combat election fraud and that it would make it more difficult for challengers to eliminate laws they contend fall most heavily on minority voters.
A bit premature in light of the above
The Supreme Court’s Surprising Term
During a time when the country has been starkly divided on matters ranging from the pandemic to the Presidency, the Court has largely avoided partisanship.
By Jeannie Suk Gersen
(The New Yorker 5 July ed.) The Court didn’t even attempt to decide the 2020 Presidential election, as Donald Trump wanted it to and as many feared that it would. Instead, the Justices repeatedly defied expectations, with conservatives and liberals together forming majorities in high-profile cases in order to avoid or defer the fighting of deeper wars.
This term, the Justices worked hard at conflict management. At times, they even appeared to be demonstrating how to properly practice politics: reach broad agreement on narrow issues, enhance legitimacy, and avoid coming to partisan blows. As the Court turns to next term’s cases on abortion and gun rights, we’ll see how long its defiance of expectations can last.

Heather Cox Richardson June 17, 2021
Today, the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, for the third time, with only two justices voting no. The court did not take on the central issue in the case, which is the argument that the law became unconstitutional in 2017 after Congress took away the penalty for failing to obtain coverage under the law. In 2012, the court decided that the mandate fell under Congress’s power to assess taxes. Republicans—who took away that penalty—argued that removing it meant that Congress no longer had the power to impose the law.
Rather than taking on that issue, the justices simply decided that those suing did not have the standing to sue. But as the law becomes more and more popular, it seems increasingly unlikely the Supreme Court will kill it. “This ruling reaffirms what we have long known to be true: the Affordable Care Act is here to stay,” former president Barack Obama tweeted.

15 June
Biden nominated as many minority women to be judges in four months as Trump had confirmed in four years
Fifteen of his 19 nominees so far are women, including 11 women from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds. The Senate confirmed U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson — widely considered a Supreme Court contender — to the influential U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on Monday. Additionally, it gave final approval to Zahid Quraishi, a magistrate judge from New Jersey and the first Muslim confirmed as a federal judge, in a bipartisan vote on Thursday.
Ruth Marcus: I’ve urged Supreme Court justices to stick around — but never to retire. Until now.
No justice wants his or her retirement to look politically motivated, even if nearly all justices these days have an eye on the occupant of the White House and try to match their departures to a president of their own party.
If Republicans regain the Senate majority, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) has now said that he will do everything within his power to prevent President Biden from filling any Supreme Court vacancy that arises.
Note to Justice Breyer: This is not Ted Kennedy’s Senate, where you worked as his chief counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee four decades ago. This is not the Senate that confirmed you 87-9 in 1994. Those kind of bipartisan votes on Supreme Court nominees are ancient history. That Senate is no more. “Talk to them” until you discover common ground — Kennedy’s approach for dealing with Republican colleagues, as Breyer related in a talk to students at the National Constitution Center last month — is great advice for high-schoolers learning to navigate the world. It doesn’t work with McConnell.
And that is why Breyer should retire at the end of the court’s current term, when there is ample time for the Democratic majority to confirm a successor. This is no easy choice. Next term has some blockbuster cases, including on guns and abortion, that Breyer might want to stick around for.
Meanwhile, he has seemed uneasy at the prospect of leaving on what looks like a political timetable, for fear of eroding — or further eroding — the public’s view of the judiciary as impartial and above politics.
McConnell: I’d block Biden SCOTUS nominee in 2024
The Senate minority leader’s comment comes as all eyes are on whether Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer will retire.

6 June
The Biggest Supreme Court Decisions Coming This Term
By Ed Kilgore
There are still 23 cases on the docket for this term, which normally ends in late June or early July. While the Court has already handed down a few rulings, justices traditionally back-load important decisions, so the best — or the worst — could be yet to come.
By most reckonings, there are four potentially big decisions that are likely to come down in the remainder of the term. Here are the cases to watch out for in the coming weeks, in descending order of notoriety (if not necessarily legal significance).
Following repeated Republican efforts to strike down the Affordable Care Act, the law will be tested once again in California v. Texas.
As Republican-controlled states compete to restrict voting opportunities and preempt local-election management in Democratic cities, the Supreme Court is expected to hand down a decision in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee that could pry open the door to such practices even more.
Fulton v. City of Philadelphia involves a Catholic social-services agency that refused to comply with Philadelphia’s laws against anti-LGBTQ discrimination in adoption placements made subsequent to a city contract. The New York Times suggests the Fulton decision could continue the judicial march toward a separate, parallel set of rules for those claiming religious grounds for discrimination.
A fourth “big case”, Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L.,  on how the First Amendment applies to social media
Many schools and educators, supported by President Joe Biden’s administration, have argued that ending their authority over students at the schoolhouse gates could make it harder to curb bullying, racism, cheating, and invasions of privacy — all frequently occurring online.
The American Civil Liberties Union, representing Levy, has argued that students need protection from censorship and monitoring of their beliefs.
See The Complicated Case of the Pennsylvania Cheerleader
The Supreme Court considers thorny questions about free speech, bullying, and whether schools can discipline students for their behavior/speech online and outside of the school-supervised setting.
Once a Bastion of Free Speech, the A.C.L.U. Faces an Identity Crisis
An organization that has defended the First Amendment rights of Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan is split by an internal debate over whether supporting progressive causes is more important.
The A.C.L.U., America’s high temple of free speech and civil liberties, has emerged as a muscular and richly funded progressive powerhouse in recent years, taking on the Trump administration in more than 400 lawsuits. But the organization finds itself riven with internal tensions over whether it has stepped away from a founding principle — unwavering devotion to the First Amendment.

17 May
Supreme Court to review Mississippi abortion law that advocates see as a path to diminish Roe v. Wade
(WaPo) Abortion opponents for months have urged the court’s conservatives to seize the chance to reexamine the 1973 precedent. Mississippi is one among many Republican-led states that have passed restrictions that conflict with the court’s precedents protecting a woman’s right to choose before fetal viability.
In accepting the case, the court said it would examine whether “all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional.” That has been a key component of the court’s jurisprudence.
[Background: Both sides on abortion certain Barrett would restrict, if not overturn, landmark court decision]
The court has now accepted for the term that begins in October two issues dear to conservatives: gun rights and the ability of states to restrict abortion. It is what they had hoped for once the court reached a 6-to-3 conservative majority with the addition of Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a conservative nominated by President Donald Trump.

7 May
Adam Gopnik: The New, Conservative Supreme Court Is Returning to the Second Amendment
The risk is that even the self-evidently essential right of the people to live in peace without worrying that someone coming down the street is carrying a weapon is under threat from the Court as it’s now constituted, particularly from Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh, whose statements and decisions make clear that they see in the newly redefined Second Amendment something close to an absolute right for Americans to take a gun anywhere they like. (As a federal-circuit judge, Barrett wrote a dissent in which she maintained that even preventing convicted felons from having guns is unconstitutional, unless they can be shown to be “dangerous” convicted felons.)
The assertion of imaginary freedoms in the face of obvious disasters has become the unique signature of the American right.
…the Court now so radically misrepresents the electorate, which has voted for a Democratic President in seven of the past eight elections, that it may be the time for a case to be made to expand the Court. …it may be time to become serious about the one original meaning that resides in the Constitution: that the majority of voters should be confident that, with every allowance made for the minority, their views will eventually prevail. The American people support gun sanity. The Supreme Court shouldn’t blindly follow election returns; but it must not be allowed to turn a blind eye to them, either.

26 April
Supreme Court to hear major new gun-control case next term on carrying weapons outside the home
(WaPo) The Supreme Court announced Monday it will hear a major new gun-control case next term, accepting a National Rifle Association-backed challenge that asks the court to declare there is a constitutional right to carry a weapon outside the home.
The court will hear the challenge to a century-old New York gun-control law in the term that begins in October. It is considering a law that requires those who seek a permit to carry a concealed weapon to show a special need for self-defense. It is similar to laws in Maryland, Massachusetts and elsewhere that the court in the past has declined to review.

18 April
Biden Inherits F.D.R.’s Supreme Court Problem
By Evan Osnos
Roosevelt tried to pack the Court to protect his ambitious agenda from conservatives. Biden, facing a similar threat, has appointed a commission to study options.
(The New Yorker) The Court can be shrunk or expanded by a simple majority vote in Congress, and the dream of doing just that has occasionally tantalized Presidents beset by judicial opposition—most famously, the predecessor whom Biden cites frequently as an inspiration: Franklin Delano Roosevelt. But, on the issue of the Court, his fondness belies contrasts in the two leaders’ political instincts.

10 April
Court-packing isn’t the right fix for our courts. Ending life tenure is.
(WaPo Editorial Board) Justice Stephen G. Breyer  urged in a Harvard Law School lecture Tuesday that “those whose initial instincts may favor important structural change . . . such as forms of court-packing, think long and hard before they embody those changes in law.” Speaking for nearly two hours, and drawing on his long experience in the law, including nearly 27 years as a Democratic president’s liberal appointee on the high court, Justice Breyer, 82, noted that the court’s effectiveness hinges on its legitimacy, which hinges on the perception that “the court is guided by legal principle, not politics.” That perception would be eroded if one party changed the court’s long-standing nine-member size to further policy objectives.
Encouragingly, the broad mandate Mr. Biden has assigned the commission allows it to examine what is a valid area for potential Supreme Court reform: replacing life tenure, instituted in 1788, at a time of much shorter life expectancy, with an 18-year term.
… Encouragingly, the broad mandate Mr. Biden has assigned the commission allows it to examine what is a valid area for potential Supreme Court reform: replacing life tenure, instituted in 1788, at a time of much shorter life expectancy, with an 18-year term.
Biden Creates Commission to Study Supreme Court Expansion
(New York) The White House announced that President Biden will sign an executive order Friday that will establish an official commission on the Supreme Court to study possible reforms, keeping a promise he made last year on the campaign trail. At the time, Biden was facing pressure from some fellow Democrats to embrace significant changes to the Court — such as adding more justices or implementing term limits — to counter the conservative tilt on the bench after President Trump added three members.
The Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States is composed of 36 legal professionals whose work focuses on constitutional law, civil rights, and voting rights. Its co-chairs are Bob Bauer, a professor of practice and distinguished scholar of residence at New York University Law School and former White House counsel under President Obama, and Cristina Rodríguez, a law professor at Yale School of Law and a former deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice

Supreme Court strikes another pandemic-related restriction on religious services
In another late-night ruling, the Supreme Court on Friday blocked another California coronavirus restriction on religious gatherings, saying the state’s limits on home-based Bible study and prayer sessions violated constitutional rights.
The 5-to-4 order on an emergency petition illustrates how a new majority on the court — with Justice Amy Coney Barrett playing a decisive role — is now in control when the court considers if pandemic-related restrictions cross the line to endanger religious rights.

23 March
The ‘shadow docket’: How the U.S. Supreme Court quietly dispatches key rulings
By Lawrence Hurley, Andrew Chung, Jonathan Allen
(Reuters) – In the months before former President Donald Trump left office in January, the U.S. Supreme Court briskly paved the way for the lethal injection of 13 federal inmates, the first federal executions in 17 years.
In many of those cases, the court summarily overturned lower court rulings using an obscure legal procedure known as the “shadow docket.” But the short-circuit approach, intended only for emergencies, isn’t reserved for death penalty cases. It has, in the last four years, significantly changed the way the high court does business.
Increasingly, the court relies on the shadow docket to make decisions in a wide range of consequential cases, often in a dramatically accelerated fashion and without providing signed opinions or detailed explanations. Sometimes, as in death penalty cases, the decisions are irreversible.

18 March
Russell Wheeler: Can Biden ‘rebalance’ the judiciary?
(Brookings) …here’s the situation that Biden faces, as of March 17, 2021: Biden will have fewer vacancies than did President Trump and thus not as many appointments. The closely divided Senate will make confirmations arduous, especially if Republicans vote against Biden nominees in numbers similar to Democratic votes against Trump nominees. Biden should be able to bolster the Democratic-appointee majority on the district courts. But he will still have difficulty changing the Republican-appointee majority on the courts of appeals.
Breyer mum as some liberals urge him to quit Supreme Court
(AP) 82-year-old Justice Stephen Breyer…is the oldest member of the court and has served more than 26 years since his appointment by President Bill Clinton.
With spring comes the start of the period in which many justices have announced their retirement. Some progressives say it is time for Breyer to go, without delay. Other liberal voices have said Breyer should retire when the court finishes its work for the term, usually by early summer.
“He should announce his retirement immediately, effective upon the confirmation of his successor,” University of Colorado law professor Paul Campos wrote in The New York Times on Monday.
Breyer’s predecessors have tended to time their retirements so that they can be replaced by justices with similar views of the law.

16 March
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse asks AG Merrick Garland to probe 2018 FBI background check into Brett Kavanaugh, suggests it was ‘fake’
In a Tuesday press release, Whitehouse, a member of the judiciary committee, said that there were still unanswered questions about the FBI’s investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct against Brett Kavanaugh.

11 March
Our Lonely Chief Justice
A recent solitary dissent by John Roberts points to his isolation from the court’s other conservatives.
By Linda Greenhouse
His opinion was pure John Roberts: pithy, smart, with deep historical analysis leavened by a touch of sarcasm. “The court sees no problem with turning judges into advice columnists” was his description of what will happen with courts no longer limited to deciding live controversies. No law clerk wrote that sentence. The view of standing that Chief Justice Roberts expressed in this opinion has always been his view of standing.
… “Today’s decision risks a major expansion of the judicial role.” Either Judge Friendly or Justice Rehnquist could have written that line, but it was their former law clerk who built a powerful dissent around it.
And who now stands alone.

25 February
What should we expect from Biden’s commission on Supreme Court reform?
Last year, Joe Biden promised to name a bipartisan commission for Supreme Court reform. Russell Wheeler provides background on previous court commissions—including one proposed by Biden when he was the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee—and predicts that incremental change is what will come out of the next commission.
(Brookings) In an interview last October, candidate Joe Biden—pressed on whether he favored expanding the Supreme Court—repeated his skepticism but promised to name a bipartisan commission to study “a number of other things that our constitutional scholars have debated.” Progressive groups will continue to press adding justices to offset Trump appointees who were confirmed with what many called a double standard. Whatever the commission recommends, the record of previous commissions suggests that even fallback recommendations won’t go far—long-brewing topics such as judicial term limits, electronic coverage of court proceedings, and tightened ethics rules. Long-delayed lower court expansion is already on the legislative agenda,

22 February
Supreme Court again rejects Trump’s bid to shield tax returns, other financial records from Manhattan prosecutor
Trump has waged an extraordinary battle to keep private his tax records, which every other modern president has released as an expected part of seeking the presidency. The court’s action does not mean Trump’s tax records are to become public — Vance has said they will be protected by grand jury secrecy rules — but is likely to accelerate an investigation that might be Trump’s biggest legal threat.
(WaPo) The Supreme Court on Monday rejected former president Donald Trump’s last-chance effort to keep his private financial records from the Manhattan district attorney, ending a long and drawn-out legal battle.
After a four-month delay, the court denied Trump’s motion in a one-sentence order with no recorded dissents.
District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. has won every stage of the legal fight — including the first round at the Supreme Court — but has yet to receive the records he says are necessary for a grand jury investigation into whether the president’s companies violated state law.
Supreme Court won’t take up challenge to Pennsylvania presidential election results
It was part of a purge of sorts. The high court formally dismissed a range of suits filed by Donald Trump and his allies in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia and Arizona — all states won by Democrat Joe Biden. The court’s intent in most of those had been signaled when it refused to expedite consideration of them before Biden was inaugurated as president.
The case about deadlines for receiving mail-in ballots was different, though. Three justices — Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M. Gorsuch — said it deserved the court’s attention, even though the number of votes at issue would not call into question Biden’s victory. … Neither Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. nor two of the three justices nominated by Trump signed on to dissents from Thomas and Alito. Besides Gorsuch, Trump chose Justices Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

2020

22 December
What Will It Take to Get a Black Woman on the Supreme Court? The fate of Biden’s campaign promise lies with Georgia.
(New York) In February, he declared that he would nominate the first Black woman to the Supreme Court. … But whether Biden will be able to actually do it will likely be decided by the Georgia Senate runoffs in January. If Democrats gain control of the Senate, the only question will be when a vacancy will open up. And if they don’t, the fate of any nominee will be decided by how much Mitch McConnell thinks he can get away with.
The groundwork is already being laid for the battle ahead. The Wall Street Journal reported recently that Biden advisers plan to have a Supreme Court nominee shortlist by Inauguration Day. When I asked one person whose name has appeared on shortlists if she believed herself to be under consideration, she laughed and said, “Every Black woman under the age of 50 is under consideration.”
Two names, though, have come up most often in conversations with legal insiders: California State Supreme Court Justice Leondra Kruger and federal district court judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, a former clerk to the oldest current Supreme Court justice, Stephen Breyer. Both have impeccable credentials — and, crucial to a lifetime appointment, are in their mid-40s.

11 December
‘Our institutions held’: Democrats (and some Republicans) cheer Supreme Court ruling on election suit.
the Supreme Court’s ruling effectively ended the president’s attempts to use the legal system to get a result the voters denied him.
(NYT) The rejection came swiftly. The celebrations came just as fast.
The Supreme Court’s unsigned order on Friday rejecting Texas’s bid to toss the results of the 2020 presidential election in four states that delivered the White House to President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. unceremoniously ended a case that President Trump had teased only hours earlier as “perhaps the most important case in history.”
Democrats cheered the ruling as a symbolic final blow to more than a month of failed legal challenges by Mr. Trump and his allies — this case drew support from more than 120 Republican members of Congress and 17 attorneys general — and a victory for the will of voters who delivered Mr. Biden 306 Electoral College votes and a 7-million-strong popular vote win.
Supreme Court rejects Texas-led effort to overturn Biden’s victory
The move likely marks the end of the line for Trump’s legal push to reverse his defeat.
(Politico) No justice indicated any endorsement of Texas’ arguments. Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas issued a statement saying they would have allowed Texas’ to file its case under a rarely-used procedure for interstate disputes, but they said “would not grant other relief.”
The decision brings an abrupt, unceremonious end to Trump’s legal effort to essentially scrap the democratic process in order to preserve his presidency, a six-week-long crusade in which he has spread false conspiracies about voter fraud to drive up distrust of the U.S. election system.

10 December
In Blistering Retort, 4 Battleground States Tell Texas to Butt Out of Election
(NYT) The attorneys general of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Georgia asked the Supreme Court to reject a lawsuit from Texas seeking to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s victories.
More Than Half of House Republicans Sign On to Trump’s Election Coup
By Matt Stieb
(New York) As the president’s lawsuits to contest the election results grow more and more absurd, Republicans’ rhetoric surrounding the soft putsch is becoming more and more worrisome. On Thursday, 106 GOP representatives signed an amicus brief sent to the Supreme Court in support of a petition by Texas attorney general Ken Paxton. The petition requests that the Supreme Court grant an emergency order that would nullify presidential election results declaring Joe Biden the winner in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin based on a bogus claim about mail-ballot rules.
Like other Trump lawsuits slated to overturn an election in which there has been no substantial evidence of voter fraud, the Texas filing is extremely unlikely to succeed. (Election-law expert Rick Hasen on Wednesday described the attempt as “a press release masquerading as a lawsuit.”) Nevertheless, 17 Republican attorneys general filed their own amicus brief in support of the Texas lawsuit. Paxton’s suit will almost surely be dismissed from the high court as soon as it gets there

8 December
Supreme Court denies Trump allies’ bid to overturn Pennsylvania election results
The Supreme Court on Tuesday denied a last-minute attempt by President Trump’s allies to overturn the election results in Pennsylvania, a blow to the president’s continuing efforts to reverse his loss to Democrat Joe Biden.
The court’s brief order denying a requested injunction provided no reasoning, nor did it note any dissenting votes. It was the first request to delay or overturn the results of last month’s presidential election to reach the court, and it appears that Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Trump’s latest nominee, took part in the case.

4 December
Nevada, Michigan, Minnesota, Arizona and Wisconsin deliver more defeats to Trump legal effort.
The Trump campaign and its Republican allies lost five legal challenges to the election in five different states in a little more than three hours on Friday evening as President Trump’s attempts to use the courts to overturn the election results drew ever closer to an end.
The string of losses, coming practically on top of one another, was the latest rebuke to the president, who has continued to make baseless claims that widespread fraud tainted the counting of votes across the country. In each of the failed lawsuits or petitions, Mr. Trump or his allies had sought to invalidate the certification of a statewide election but judges — some of them conservatives — held the line and often offered striking repudiations of the claims.