Sluggish Supreme Court Poised to Deliver Big Decisions
The Supreme Court started the current term in October with a docket that could have a lasting impact on politics and culture, including major cases on partisan gerrymandering and LGBT rights, but six months later, the justices haven’t crossed off much on their to-do list, points out Todd Ruger for Roll Call.
That situation will result in some big decisions being handed down in the short time remaining before the end of the term in June.
“Speculation is rampant about what’s going on behind closed doors on some of the big cases — such as one about arbitration that was argued on the first day of the term in October,” writes Ruger. “Some legal experts say the court seems to be feeling out a new dynamic with Justice Neil Gorsuch in his first full term.”
He quotes Adam Feldman, a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia Law School and creator of a high court statistics blog, Empirical SCOTUS, as saying some recent decisions had fractured the justices, with each seemingly wanting to have their own say, which “shows they’re having trouble finding that point of consensus not along ideological grounds.”