SCOTUStoday for Friday, November 21

A new poll on the Supreme Court found that 30% of Americans have heard or read a lot about the court in the past month, 60% have heard a little, and 10% haven’t heard anything at all. What we’re hearing is that 10% of Americans are in desperate need of the SCOTUStoday newsletter. (Read more about the survey in the Morning Reads section below.)

SCOTUS Quick Hits

• Today, the justices will take part in a private conference, where they will discuss cases and vote on petitions for review.
• On Monday, the court is expected to release an order list at 9:30 a.m. EST.
• Mark your calendars: SCOTUSblog will be hosting a live blog during the oral argument in Trump v. Slaughter on Monday, Dec. 8. The live blog will begin at 9:30 a.m. EST.

Morning Reads

• Trump administration ordered to halt ‘unlawful’ Guard deployment in D.C. (Jenny Gathright and Meagan Flynn, The Washington Post) — A federal judge on Thursday “ordered the Trump administration to halt its National Guard deployment to Washington while a lawsuit over the matter plays out in court, siding with D.C.’s Office of the Attorney General and writing that the administration has ‘exceeded the bounds of [its] statutory authority’ in requesting National Guard assistance from other states,” according to The Washington Post. However, U.S. District Judge Jia M. Cobb put her ruling on hold “for 21 days to give a higher court the chance to rule on a Trump administration appeal.” The D.C. dispute is happening as the Supreme Court considers whether the administration can move forward with a planned deployment in Illinois.
• New Marquette Law School National Survey Finds 55% Say Department of Justice Has Filed Unjustified Cases Against Trump’s Political Opponents (Kevin Conway, Marquette University News Center) — Among other things, a new Marquette Law School Poll found that the Supreme Court’s approval rating has hit its lowest point since July 2024, with just 44% of adults now saying they approve of how the court is handling its job, down from 50% in September. “There are substantial partisan differences in views of the Supreme Court, with Republicans much more approving (74%) than independents (33%) or Democrats (17%).” The survey also showed that Americans are split over the court’s relationship with President Donald Trump. “A majority, 56%, think the Supreme Court is going out of its way to avoid ruling against Trump, while 44% say it is not avoiding ruling against him.”
• Fox News Poll: Voters say White House is doing more harm than good on economy (Dana Blanton, Fox News) — Fox News also released the results of its latest national survey this week. Although its poll primarily focused on Americans’ views on the Trump administration, it included a few questions about how the executive branch interacts with the other two branches. “The electorate believes the different branches of government are failing to live up to their constitutional obligations. Two-thirds are concerned about Congress (64%) and the Supreme Court (63%) not doing the checks and balances that they should and are giving too much of their constitutional authority to the president. At the same time, about half (47%) are concerned the judicial branch is obstructing Trump’s constitutional authority to carry out his agenda.”
• Democrats to revisit bill to allow Americans to sue ICE, Justice Department for constitutional violations (Benjamin S. Weiss, Courthouse News Service) — A group of Democrats serving in the U.S. House of Representatives “is taking another run at amending federal law to allow Americans to receive damages from government agencies and officials that violate their constitutional rights,” according to Courthouse News Service. “The Supreme Court has offered limited recourse for people whose constitutional rights were violated by federal officials via the high court’s Bivens doctrine, which stems from the 1971 case Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents. But the ability to sue the government for such violations is not currently codified in law.” The bill, which has been proposed several times since 2020 but failed to make significant progress through Congress, would address that gap.
• Another religious school to apply for public charter status in Oklahoma (Naaz Modan, K-12 Dive) — Six months after a split Supreme Court blocked the nation’s first religious charter school from launching in Oklahoma, a new effort to open such a school is underway in the state. The National Ben Gamla Jewish Charter School Foundation has filed notice that it “intends to apply to the Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board for virtual charter authorization” and begin serving students during the 2026-27 school year, according to K-12 Dive. The Supreme Court’s 4-4 decision in May (an outcome that became possible after Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself) left an Oklahoma Supreme Court ruling in place that said sending state funding to a religious charter school would violate state law, the Oklahoma Constitution, and the U.S. Constitution.
• Dick Cheney remembered at funeral as having “devotion to America” over party (Caroline Linton and Kathryn Watson, CBS News) — Former Vice President Dick Cheney’s funeral took place on Thursday at Washington National Cathedral. In its coverage of the event, CBS News noted that Chief Justice John Roberts was “present for the service, along with Associate Justices Clarence Thomas, Elena Kagan and Brett Kavanaugh.” Former Justice Anthony Kennedy was also there.

A Closer Look: John Rutledge, the Shortest-Serving Chief Justice

This is the second in our series covering some of the court’s most notable justices.

There’s John Jay, the country’s first chief justice. There’s John Marshall, widely considered the nation’s greatest chief justice. And then there’s John Rutledge, the United States’ shortest-serving chief justice.

Born in 1739 in Charleston, South Carolina, the eldest son of an Irish immigrant physician and a Huguenot mother, Rutledge was admitted to the English bar at 21. He returned home to practice law amid brewing colonial unrest. By 1765, Rutledge was a delegate to the Stamp Act Congress, railing against Parliament’s taxes, and he later signed the Continental Association at the First Continental Congress in 1774. He then served as South Carolina’s first president/governor from 1776-1778 and 1779-1782, with broad emergency powers – he could do anything but execute a citizen without a trial – granted by the state’s Legislature.

As a delegate at the 1787 Constitutional Convention, Rutledge chaired a five-member Committee of Detail, which would draft the first version of the U.S. Constitution, written as a report. During this work, Rutledge advocated for a strong yet limited federal government – namely, one insulated from public opinion and skewed toward elite “gentlemen” in its branches. A staunch defender of slavery, Rutledge insisted on protections for the slave trade and warned that the people of South Carolina and Georgia “would never be such fools as to give up so important an interest.”

In 1789, President George Washington tapped Rutledge as one of the original associate justices. Nevertheless, Rutledge did not hear a single Supreme Court case, and a year later, he resigned after having to ride the grueling Southern Circuit. As SCOTUSblog’s Andrew Hamm noted in 2016, “In the Court’s early history, Justices twice a year travelled the country as circuit judges [to hear cases]. Rutledge covered the Southern Circuit – the most far-flung and difficult to traverse. Many on the Court shared his disgruntlement over the circuit burden, and his successor, Justice Thomas Johnson, quit after five months.”

When Jay resigned in 1795, Rutledge lobbied Washington for the top spot and was appointed to it when Congress was in recess. Over four months, the Rutledge court handed down just two decisions: United States v. Peters, on a district court improperly proceeding when it lacked jurisdiction over a matter, and Talbot v. Jansen, which established that Americans who gain citizenship in another country do not waive their U.S. citizenship. Rutledge then burned his bridges with a fiery speech disparaging Jay’s Treaty with Britain (crafted by his predecessor on the court) as a “death warrant” for the nation – according to Rutledge, he’d “rather see [the President] dead than to see him sign the Treaty.”

When Congress reconvened, Federalist senators, already whispering of Rutledge’s financial woes and apparent depressive spells (likely exacerbated by his wife’s death in 1792), denied his nomination to serve as chief justice 14-10, the first rejection of a Supreme Court nominee in Senate history. In 1795, Rutledge tried to drown himself off a Charleston dock but was reportedly saved by two slaves who saw him in the water. He spent the rest of his life outside the public eye (save for a stint in the South Carolina House of Representatives) and died in 1800, a year before John Marshall was appointed to the Supreme Court as its fourth chief justice. 

SCOTUS Quote

“I think it’s a common misconception that answers are easy and that if you can just find the right theory, there’s the promise of certitude. And no legal theory can deliver that. That includes originalism.”

— Justice Amy Coney Barrett

On Site

Relist Watch

Pipeline Pay, Pandemic Preemption, Professors’ Parity, and a Prisoner’s Plea

In his latest Relist Watch column, John Elwood explored four new relists that will be reconsidered during today’s conference. Among them is Hoffmann v. WBI Energy Transmission, Inc., which asked the court “to referee a disagreement over how to determine the value of ‘just compensation’ when a private natural-gas pipeline uses the Natural Gas Act’s federal eminent-domain power to take property to construct a pipeline.” Elwood noted that the petition has “unusually broad support” from states, “which are typically adverse to property owners’ just compensation claims.”

Contributor Corner

The Shadow Docket Fails Again

In his latest Courtly Observations column, Erwin Chemerinsky took a closer look at the court’s recent decision in Trump v. Orr, an interim docket case on passports for transgender and nonbinary Americans. The short opinion was representative of a larger theme, Chemerinsky wrote: The court is failing “to follow well-established principles for staying a preliminary injunction, which – while it may sound technical – has enormous importance.”