“The Supreme Court just wrapped up its first full term with two of Trump’s nominees on the bench. But the court’s much-anticipated conservative revolution didn’t really happen this year. To be sure, the last few weeks of the term were full of consequential decisions that hinged on just one vote. But even though there were some fierce disagreements among the justices, the court’s final rulings were actually not very controversial at all — at least from the perspective of most Americans,” reports Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux and Anna Wiederkehr in FiveThirtyEight’s Supreme Court.

“According to a recent survey by a group of researchers at Stanford, Harvard and the University of Texas, Austin, which asked Americans about central issues facing the court, the justices’ rulings were in line with public opinion in 8 out of 10 major cases.”

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Judge Brett Kavanaugh

In the midst of the discord surrounding his confirmation hearings, Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh was a placid presence. Even as he deflected most questions about legal issues, he was quick to say he was alert to the real-world consequences of his rulings, reports The New York Times.

“He gave the same answers countless times, explaining, for instance, that Roe v. Wade had in 1973 established a constitutional right to abortion and that the Supreme Court had repeatedly reaffirmed it, notably in 1992,” writes Adam Liptak. “But he would not say whether he was prepared to overrule it.”

“The Democrats made a fairly strong case that Judge Kavanaugh is very partisan and loyal to the president,” said Paul M. Collins Jr., a political scientist at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. “The nominee’s refusal to criticize the president in his attacks against the judicial branch didn’t help his case.”

Read the NY Times article.

Brett Kavanaugh

Conservatives who were hoping to get a new justice onto the Supreme Court before a major case involving illegal immigrants’ rights to abortion reaches the justices may end up being disappointed by PResident Trump’s Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, warns The Washington Times.

Under standard court practice, Kavanaugh would have to recuse himself because he participated in the case while on the Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, writes reporter Alex Swoyer.

Swoyer explaqins: “While there are specific standards for district and circuit judges, there aren’t any hard-and-fast rules for the high court — only precedent. Justices set their own standards, and make decisions on a case-by-case basis.”

Read the Washington Times article.

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.”

Read the Roll Call article.

When the U.S. Supreme Court begins its new term Monday, it will take up a docket filled with some of the moment’s most contentious issues: voting rights, religious liberty, protection from discrimination, and privacy in an increasingly monitored society, reports The Washington Post.

Reporter Robert Barnes quotes Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who told Georgetown University law students recently: “There is only one prediction that is entirely safe about the upcoming term, and that is: It will be momentous.”

He lists three cases that will get the most attention:

* Whether the court for the first time will find that a state’s electoral districts were gerrymandered with such a partisan skew that they violate the Constitution.

* Whether prosecutors must seek a judge’s permission before securing cellphone tower records that contain months of details about a person’s whereabouts.

* Whether a wedding vendor whose religious beliefs do not condone same-sex marriage must comply with a state law that prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Read The Washington Post article.

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Worker’s rights opinions written by Judge Neil Gorsuch, President Donald Trump’s pick for the Supreme Court, are often sympathetic but coldly pragmatic, and they’re usually in the employer’s favor, according to a review conducted by the Associated Press.

“A review of dozens of employment cases he heard in his decade on the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals reveals a focus on texts and a fondness for scrutinizing definitions of words in legislation and the Constitution. Conservatives herald his strict approach. Many liberals say it too often results in workers losing out,” write AP reporters Denise Lavoie and Michael Tarm.

The federal appeals court judge has sided with employers 21 out of 23 times in disputes over the U.S. pensions and benefits law, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, or ERISA. He sided with the majorty in all 21 cases.

Read the AP article.

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Judge Richard Posner of the Seventh Circuit had some harsh words for justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, decreeing that only two of them write readable opinions and singling out Justice Samuel A. Alito for penning “the most tedious opinion I’ve ever read.”

Above the Law covered Posner’s interview at a Chicago bookstore on the occasion of the publication of a biography of the outspoken jurist.

“I’m very critical. I don’t think the judges are very good. I think the Supreme Court is awful. I think it’s reached a real nadir. Probably only a couple of the justices, Breyer and Ginsburg, are qualified. They’re okay, they’re not great,” he said in the interview.

Above the Law’s David Lat reported that Posner also was critical of the justices’ lack of trial experience: “[I]f you look at the Supreme Court, for example, of the nine justices — I’m bringing Scalia back from the dead to have the standard number of justices — of those nine, one had been in a trial courtroom. It’s ridiculous to have an appellate judge who doesn’t have trial experience.”

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Merrick Garland

Hillary Clinton has started talking to reporters again, but Bloomberg Law reports there’s still a big question she hasn’t answered: Would she re-nominate Merrick Garland to the open seat on the Supreme Court?

Senate Republicans have refused to hold hearings on Garland’s nomination, saying the next president should be the one to select a nominee to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia.

The Democratic presidential candidate has studiously avoided saying whether she would renominate Garland for the vacancy if it is still pending next year, writes Bloomberg’s Greg Stohr.

“Clinton’s decision would shape both the direction of the court and tone of her presidency. She could stick with Garland, a 63-year-old moderate whose nomination has languished since March. Garland would shift the court to the left but not as far as some liberals would like,” Stohr writes. “Or she could opt for a younger, more progressive nominee, as well as the bigger confirmation fight that would invite.”

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As the U.S. Supreme Court enters the last month of its term, the impact of having only eight justices already is clear. Some of the most high-profile cases of the year are not being decided, or perhaps even worse, are being resolved on narrow grounds that create more confusion than clarity in the law, writes Erwin Chemerinsky in the ABA Journal.

Chemerinsky is Dean and Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of California, Irvine School of Law.

“A 4-4 tie, which affirms the lower court without opinion by an evenly divided high court, is not a problem when there is no split among the lower courts and there already is a clear prior decision on point. In fact, in a couple of cases, the justices divided 4-4 on whether to overrule a precedent,” writes Chemerinsky.

He discusses Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, which raised the issue of whether to overrule Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, which held that non-union members of a public employees’ union can be required to pay the share of the union dues that go to support the collective bargaining activities of the union. The article also considers Franchise Tax Board of California v. Hyatt, in which one of the questions presented was whether to overrule Nevada v. Hall, which held that a state may be sued in the courts of another state.

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Justice Antonin Scalia’s death is big news in the larger political world, leaving a Supreme Court that may be evenly split on a wide range of politically and socially charged legal questions, writes G. Ray Warner in Greenberg Traurig’s GT Restucturing Review.

“Although one can view many bankruptcy law questions through a political or social policy lens, the Justices rarely see the cases they take in that way. Instead, they treat most of their bankruptcy appeals as technical questions of statutory interpretation,” the article says.

“Justice Scalia was very hostile to the idea of equitable powers and his opinion in Law v. Siegel threatened the very idea of bankruptcy courts as courts of equity. His departure leaves that side of the debate without a strong advocate and likely shifts the balance back towards more robust equitable powers in bankruptcy,” Warner writes.

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The U.S. Supreme Court dealt a rare setback Wednesday to companies trying to avoid potentially expensive class-action lawsuits when justices ruled that offers of full compensation to the lead plaintiff in such a case do not automatically end the legal challenge, reports USA Today. The 6-3 decision was written by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

“An unaccepted settlement offer, like other unaccepted contract offers, creates no lasting right or obligation,” wrote Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the 6-3 opinion. “Once unaccepted, the offer is off the table.”

“The case was among several on the court’s docket this term that could lead to more or fewer class-action lawsuits,” the report says.

Read the article.