11 articles
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.
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.
On February 13, 2016, 79-year-old Justice Antonin Scalia died at a ranch in Marfa, Texas. That night, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, who was then the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., both declared that the Senate should not act on any new nomination for a Supreme Court justice until after the presidential election in November 2016.
One of the first blockbuster Supreme Court decisions of the past 10 years will surely affect the election taking place at the beginning of the new decade.
As the second decade of the 21st century winds down, it’s a good time to take stock of what these past 10 years have meant for the Supreme Court – and, by extension, the country. The major change at the court, of course, has been in its makeup.
The Supreme Court closed out its 2017-2018 term with high-profile rulings in the challenge to President Donald Trump’s ban on travel to the United States by citizens of eight predominantly Muslim countries and the dispute over the payment of fees by public-sector employees who are represented by – but do not belong to – a union.