Every post published in December 2019, most recent first.
Abortion was a hot-button issue at the Supreme Court during the past decade, as it has been for almost 50 years. The right to obtain an abortion before a fetus becomes viable was first recognized in 1973 in Roe v. Wade and then curtailed in 1992 in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which allowed states to regulate pre-viability abortions as long as the regulations do not pose an undue burden on abortion access.
The Supreme Court is no stranger to political debate. Outside factors, like President Franklin Roosevelt’s proposal to add six justices to the bench in 1937, as well as the justices’ own actions, such as the unanimous 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, have often focused public attention on the court.
On July 9, 2018, President Donald Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh, then a 53-year-old appeals court judge, to fill the vacancy created by the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy.
Briefly: At The Hill, John Kruzel reports that “Chief Justice John Roberts has tried to prevent the Supreme Court from being seen as just another political body, but when he presides over President Trump‘s likely impeachment trial in the Senate, the partisan glare will be hard for him to avoid.” At
Today Chief Justice John Roberts issued his annual year-end report on the federal judiciary. The 2018 report had focused on the judiciary’s response to allegations of sexual misconduct in the workplace, but the 2019 report was more upbeat, lauding the judiciary’s role in civic education.
There is a long history of “test cases” being brought all the way to the Supreme Court by interest groups recruiting suitable plaintiffs. Two of this decade’s major cases involving race were no exception – although the “interest group” was comprised of one person.
The LGBTQ rights movement experienced a handful of victories at the Supreme Court in the first half of the decade. A string of federal litigation culminated in the court’s 2015 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which found that the Constitution includes a right for same-sex couples to marry.
On March 23, 2010, President Barack Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act into law. The law was almost immediately challenged in federal court, leading to three days of oral argument at the Supreme Court in March of 2012.
Over the last decade, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has become a pop culture icon – an unlikely attainment for a Supreme Court justice. Throughout her career, Ginsburg has made history and broken glass ceilings, from graduating first in her class at Columbia to founding the ACLU Women’s Rights Project to becoming the second woman on the Supreme Court bench.
Briefly: At Politico Magazine (via How Appealing), Jeff Greenfield writes that the late Justice John Paul Stevens’ 2014 book “Six Amendments” revealed Stevens “as a deep pessimist about what has happened to the high court as an instrument for expanding justice, a man who believed that the radical