What You Need to Know About 2024's Most Significant Supreme Court Decisions

Tyler Foggatt
Its late June, the time in the year when the biggest Supreme Court decisions are typically handed down. And this term includes some very consequential cases.

Unknown
The Supreme Court, which has now added argument days and could finish its term in some very big cases this week.

Amy Davidson Sorkin
The Supreme Court issued multiple rulings today, but the cases involving gun rights and abortions during medical emergencies, well, all those are still pending.

Unknown
Then there's the case that justices seem to be trying to delay on purpose coup trial or presidential immunity for Donald Trump.

Tyler Foggatt
I spoke with my colleague, staff writer Amy Davidson Sorkin, on Tuesday, June 25. Ahead of the week's decisions. We talked about how to interpret the opinions that have already been issued, what to expect in the opinions to come, and how this might all affect the election.

You're listening to the political scene. I'm Tyler Foggatt, and I'm a senior editor at the New Yorker.

Hey, Amy, thanks so much for coming on the show.

Amy Davidson Sorkin
Hi, Tyler. How are you doing?

Tyler Foggatt
I'm good. I'm wondering if we can start by just having you walk through the big cases that the Supreme Court is deciding on this term. You know, so it's currently Tuesday morning. It looks like the Supreme Court is going to be issuing a number of extremely consequential opinions as the week goes on. And before that happens, I'm wondering if you can just walk us through some of the big cases that they've been looking at and the opinions that they've already issued.

Amy Davidson Sorkin
You know, its not unheard of that the Supreme Court would have a lot of cases at the very end. Whats unusual is how many they have that are really consequential and consequential in different ways. Arguably, one of the bigger cases that the Supreme Court decided was way back earlier this spring about Donald Trumps eligibility to be on the ballot this fall.

Tyler Foggatt
This was the Colorado ballot.

Amy Davidson Sorkin
Casey the Colorado ballot case involving section three of the Constitution.

And the bottom line was that they ruled 90 that Colorado couldn't throw Trump off of the ballot on its own.

Tyler Foggatt
That's a big one.

Amy Davidson Sorkin
That was a big one. And I guess that's one reason that the term seems consequential.

It's been true for a while now that a lot of the Supreme Court's big cases are things that people vote about that are incredibly important in the elections in an unusual way. A lot of the big cases involve both the last election and this coming presidential election because they involve Donald Trump. There are two big cases that, as we sit here on Tuesday, have yet to be decided.

One involves the question of presidential immunity. Thats obviously very important to Trump because hes still on trial, facing trial in three jurisdictions, federal charges related to January 6 in DC, state charges related to efforts to undo the 2020 election results, steal Georgias electoral votes, and then a case involving the Espionage act and a hoard of national security documents in Florida.

All of those in different ways could be affected by the presidential immunity case. So thats pretty big. The one in DC, which is the one thats sort of the subject of the case, has been on hold pending this decision for a while. But as if that wasn't big enough, the immunity cases is bigger than Donald Trump because it does deal with a question that the Supreme Court hasn't really spoken to yet, which is, what is the vulnerability or susceptibility of a former president to being brought into court on criminal charges for things he did while he was in office?

Our sort of human reaction is, why should there be any immunity? The court has actually found in a civil context that former presidents do have some immunity for acts that are within the outer perimeter of their official responsibilities. You can't just sue a former president for an official action that he took that's civil, not criminal, but say a.

Tyler Foggatt
Bribe or something that was paid. Would that be a personal act?

Amy Davidson Sorkin
It's such a good question, Tyler, because in the oral arguments about this case, there was a lot of back and forth between the justices and the lawyers for both sides about whether a bribe would be a personal action or an official action because it has an official aspect to it. Cause say it's a bribe to appoint an ambassador or something like that, but you're taking the money on the side. So that's part of the reason why this case is so important and has taken a long time. Jack Smith, the special counsel and his team won at the appeals court level. The US Court of Appeals for the DC circuit said, you know what? This whole idea that a former president is immune from criminal prosecution, even for official acts, we dont buy it. Its not a thing. There are things that a president, they said a former president could offer as defenses in a trial, like, I had to do it for national security. I had to do this. But they said, you know, thats a defense that doesnt keep you from going on trial at all. Its just not something that we recognize in our democracy.

Its not clear that the Supreme Court is going to come down that way. At the appeals court, there was really now infamous moment when one of the judges on the panel asked Trumps lawyer, well, are you saying that a president would be immune if he ordered the assassination of one of his political rivals.

I should say that there is one on Trump's position about immunity. He says you can be prosecuted if you've first been impeached, for example. Okay, so it's not like you can never, ever, ever, but it's just if you haven't been impeached, you can't be prosecuted.

Tyler Foggatt
Well, yeah, impeachment is famously easy to pull off.

Amy Davidson Sorkin
Famously easy to pull off. And it is a very Trump like inversion because basically the impeachment clause says that if you've been impeached, you can still be criminally prosecuted. And they've sort of turned that around to say, well, what this is really saying is that you can only be criminally prosecuted if you've been impeached, which is an interesting reading of it, to say the least.

So basically, Trump's lawyers seem to be saying that, yeah, you could assassinate a political rival and then the lawyer said, but of course, I'm sure you'd be impeached for that. And then we don't have to worry about it. So it's a story, obviously. Yeah. So, but an interesting thing happened when the case went to the Supreme Court. The special counsel's office is ultimately answerable to the Department of Justice in one way or the other. They're independent. But, you know, so they were also, in their arguments before the Supreme Court, representing the presidency in some ways. And there was, and a couple of the justices pointed this out, there was some tension there because the Justice Department doesn't actually want a lot of presidents to be criminally prosecuted. And one of the examples that kept coming up was drone strikes.

Tyler Foggatt
Yeah.

Amy Davidson Sorkin
So there's tension there. And at one point in the oral arguments, Elena Kagan said, you know, this is hard, this is complicated. Maybe this is the case where we should draw some lines.

So, you know, we think of it as like trumps coming to the Supreme Court with an almost clownish argument. You know, I want all the immunity, give me all the immunity.

Thats probably not going to be where it ends up. But the answer, the outcome might be a lot more in the gray zone than people are hoping for.

Tyler Foggatt
Thats interesting. Im wondering if you can talk about the cases that dont involve the executive, you know, just the cases that the Supreme Court is looking at that might affect everyday peoples lives.

Amy Davidson Sorkin
So one thing that distinguished this year is that, depending on how you see it, the court was doing cleanup or dealing with some of the consequences of some really radical decisions its made in the last couple of years and seeing how lower courts have heard them and are implementing those in peoples lives. You know, a big example is abortion. Dobbs overturned Roe v. Wade, and different states have taken different approaches to that, and there are still a lot of activists and politicians seeking for even more. On a federal level. That was something that came up in the miffpress Stone case, which is the abortion pill, which an appeals court had ruled that that could be banned, not just in the states that had their own restrictive abortion laws, but nationwide. Basically, they tried to undo the FDA.

Tyler Foggatt
Approval so you wouldn't be able to get it in New York.

Amy Davidson Sorkin
Exactly, because it wouldn't be an approved FDA thing. Now that by the time it got to the Supreme Court, it got narrowed a little. So it wasn't the approval overall, but it was the ways that access to the abortion pill had been increased, notably during the pandemic with more telehealth options and fewer doctors visits.

What was radical about that case is the way it came to the court. You can't just, in theory, you can't just go to the Supreme Court because something annoys you or something offends you. There has to be an actual controversy that can be addressed by a court.

Tyler Foggatt
There has to be harm, right?

Amy Davidson Sorkin
Yeah, it's called standing that you have to have. Extraordinarily, this case had gotten this far, even though the people who, who brought it said they had standing because they were medical professionals who thought that they might at some point encounter somebody with complications from taking an abortion pill and be asked to treat them.

Two issues with that. One is that such side effects are vanishingly rare. And the other thing, and this mattered a lot, even to the conservative justices, is that there are already what are called conscience protections for doctors. Doctors don't have to take part in anything having to do with abortion if they don't want to. And hospitals generally plan around that.

Tyler Foggatt
That's interesting because I feel like there's been so much discourse about pro life doctors or even medical students having to perform procedures that they disagree with ideologically. And it's interesting that there's already kind of a system to prevent that.

Amy Davidson Sorkin
You know, nothing is absolute, and I don't know honestly what the situation is for medical students who are training, but they're pretty robust. They seemed enough for even the conservative justices in the end.

So in the face of that, there was really an extraordinary way they tried to say they still had standing, which is that although they would be able to exercise their conscience protections, it would be uncomfortable for them to do so, which was, you know, that, yeah, it's hard if you're refusing to treat a woman who comes in in crisis. They just didn't want to ever have to exercise the conscience requirements. And there was one moment when Ketanji Brown Jackson was trying to get, like, what they thought was, you know, participating in an abortion.

Ketanji Brown Jackson
No, wait, I'm sorry, complicit. Like, I'm, I work in the emergency room and this is going on. I'm handing them a water bottle. I'm like, what do you mean, complicit in the process.

Amy Davidson Sorkin
And, you know, in the end, the justices walked away from that and they said, look, they don't have standing to bring this.

Tyler Foggatt
Could it be brought again by, you know, the lone woman who has had bad side effects from the drug? I mean, is that sort of what they're setting the stage for, is for people who taken the drug to come forward?

Amy Davidson Sorkin
It's, you know, there's a lot of debate about who that would be, who had standing. And, you know, it's not over yet. The story with that, the other big abortion case that we're still waiting on involves federal law. It's called emtala. That's the acronym, stands for the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor act. And basically this is something that says under Medicaid and Medicare that hospitals that take federal money are required to stabilize patients.

And so its not like the everyday case, but its a case that tests the question, you know, what if a woman shows up in crisis and the right care for her would be an abortion? This came up in Idaho, which has a new and very, very restrictive abortion law. The federal government actually initiated this case saying that the Idaho law ran up against this federal.

So more generally, it's about where the limits of the state's control of this are and the federal government's control.

You know, does the federal government still have a way to protect women in crisis, no matter what the abortion laws in different states are?

Tyler Foggatt
More with staff writer Amy Davidson Sorkin after the break.

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Tyler Foggatt
So just going off of the abortion pill case, in which it seems like the conservative justices ruled in a way that was slightly surprising, I'm wondering if we can talk about one of the more recent decisions that we've gotten from the court, which is in United States v. Rahimi, which is a case that you wrote about. Could you talk a little bit about that case and whether you were surprised by the opinion?

Amy Davidson Sorkin
So Rahimi is a case that in the same way that some of these other abortion cases are kind of the consequences of DoBBS it's the consequences of a case a couple of years ago that's known as Bruhn, the Brune decision, which invalidated a New York state gun control law. Brune not only threw out that law, but set a standard that has confused courts. It basically says that a gun control law can only survive if it reflects the nation's historic tradition of gun regulation.

Tyler Foggatt
What does that mean?

I guess that's the question, right?

Amy Davidson Sorkin
That's the question. From the decision, it sounded like it meant that if the founders of this nation didn't see this as a proper way to limit gun ownership and purchases, then we shouldn't either.

Tyler Foggatt
That's weird. I mean, is that basically a decision that is requiring courts that are hearing various gun cases to think about it in terms of originalism? It seems like it's like kind of mandating what, you know, application is.

Amy Davidson Sorkin
Now, Bruton said that you didn't need a historical twin. It didn't need to be exact, but it had to be a strong historical analog, similar in relevant ways. And one thing that, again, Judge Jackson brought up in her concurrence in Rahimi is that this has set off a rush by different courts to dig up historical 18th century commentaries, those poor clerks, and by jurists who aren't trained as historians. And there's a lot of cherry picking, there's a lot of confusion, and we've changed a lot in a lot of ways since the 18th century. One of the ways we've changed is our view of what rights a woman has and what rights a woman has to be safe in her own home. Rahimi made it to the Supreme Court because the fifth circuit court of appeals said that there was in the founding era no law that took guns away from a man who was a domestic abuser and so they used that to say that a federal law that prohibits people who are under certain kinds of domestic violence, restraining orders could not possess guns. They said, well, we dont see this deeply rooted in our nations history, so its no good. The actual case they were looking at was pretty extraordinarily stark. Rahimi Saki Rahimi, young man about 20, confronted his a woman hed been in a relationship with, with whom he had a small child in a parking lot, tried to force her into his car, hit her against the dashboard. And I should just preface this by saying that all of these things are still being worked out in court. So let me just add an alleged to the description of all of Rahimis actions, which are quite extensive.

When he saw that a witness in the parking lot was observing this, he grabbed a gun from under the seat of his car and fired a shot. In that moment, the young woman got away. She just made a break for it, and he called her and threatened to shoot her if she told anyone. She went to court anyway, fearing, as she said, for her safety and the safety of her small child, and got a restraining order.

The restraining order told him to stay away from her, only contact her about their child in sort of more structured ways, and it suspended his gun license.

The havoc of his actions in the year that followed is still being worked out in court, but the allegations are that he not only kept contacting her, he threatened a second woman with a gun. He was involved in two road rage incidents in which he fired a gun at different drivers and vehicles.

He fired an AR 15 style gun at the home of somebody who had bought drugs from him, complained about, I guess, the customer service experience on social media.

And he fired a gun in a residential neighborhood in the air near where children were playing.

And he also fired his gun after his friend's credit card was turned down at a Whataburger restaurant.

So this is the case that was coming that came to them. This is the case that the Fifth Circuit said, we don't see a problem with this guy having a gun.

Tyler Foggatt
And the Supreme Court did.

Amy Davidson Sorkin
The Supreme Court did for a few reasons.

This case was closely watched because the question was, were they going to draw back on Brune, or were they going to affirm that Brune is as radical and as extreme as some of the lower courts are deciding it is? There have been dozens of cases where judges have said, well, according to Brune, this law or that law doesn't seem constitutional to us, and this case doesn't entirely resolve them. But there were some hopes that it might on all sides. In the end, the court said that they didn't really walk away from the Brune standard, but they did their own digging and cherry picking and came up with some 18th century laws that they thought justified taking a gun away from Zakir Rahimi.

In the oral arguments, John Roberts said to Rahimis lawyer, I mean, your client, wouldnt you agree that hes a dangerous man, hes been shooting at people? So this was a case that they could live with. And that, in a way, is the real problem with Brune. You know, we have a long and varied history. You can find what you want in it pretty often. And if youre not looking at the underlying principles of the different amendments, the different rights, let alone the question of whether a woman can be or a man or anybody can be safe in their home when they've been threatened by an intimate partner, then you're going to keep getting lost when it comes to guns.

So it was an eight one decision ultimately, but it was framed as a pretty narrow one. It said that the way this federal law was written, which requires a finding that somebody is a threat to somebody else and requires that there's a notice of a hearing person has the right to participate in that hearing, that there were enough safeguards for them, and it seemed they were okay with taking a gun away from this guy. But it doesn't overturn the broome framework. It expands it a little. It makes it clear that it, again emphasizes that you don't need a twin, you need an analog. But it doesn't get us away from this very hard to deal with framework. Now, that was one of two big gun cases this year, which the other one involved bump stocks after the mass shooting in Las Vegas a few years ago.

Tyler Foggatt
And that was, there was a ban on bump stocks that was passed during the Trump administration. Right.

Amy Davidson Sorkin
That's what this was about even before that. There is right now in the country a ban on machine guns. A bump stock is a workaround. That ban, it basically uses the force of the gun's recoil to make it easier to keep having the bullets coming.

It was an odd decision because it discussed the muscles in people's fingers, basically, and what it meant for a law to ban a gun, that it only requires the single action of a trigger. In the end, they overturned the ban on bump stocks, which talk about people's lives. In Las Vegas, dozens of people died in a very, very, very short period of time. But the saving grace is that it does say that theres no problem with bans on bump stocks per se, but Congress has to do it. You cant just read existing laws against machine guns to say that they also apply to guns that have been converted into machine guns by a bump stock.

But its just a reminder that even though the decision in Rahimi was eight one, this is still the same court that overturned the bump stock bang by a six three vote with the three liberal justices in the minority.

Tyler Foggatt
Yeah, I mean, I honestly have a hard time telling sometimes whether the court is incredibly politicized and we can sort of predict what they're going to do at any given moment or whether they, you know, are more moderate and idiosyncratic. And just based on what you were just saying about these two gun cases, you know, it seems like some of their decisions are a bit counterintuitive and even kind of conflict with each other. And I'm just wondering what we are supposed to make of that. If you look at the polls now, I think that public opinion of the court is lower than ever. And I can't tell whether that's because of the sort of general sense that this is the court that overturned Roe v. Wade, and it's just unabashedly conservative and we can't trust them, or whether this has more to do with some of the personal issues that the justices have been having.

Amy Davidson Sorkin
You know, I think it's a complicated question, justices who are in one way or the other conservative, and there are three justices who are in one way or the other liberal. We do focus a lot on the cases where the lines are clear, but there are a lot of cases where they all agree. A lot of, even the Colorado ballot.

Tyler Foggatt
Case, which is controversial, I mean, it was 90.

Amy Davidson Sorkin
And there are also a lot of cases that just aren't as much on the general public's radar that have to do with bankruptcy law or water rights between states. And although those can be, I should say those can be very controversial, too.

But I think that there's something more interesting going on at the court that's going to play out in the next few years. And I don't think any of us can quite say how, which is that there also seem to be some divisions or some different ways of going about things, even among the conservative justices.

I'm not going to say there are any that there's anybody who's going to completely surprise people by just flipping from one column to the other in either direction. But they do all have beliefs and ways of going about things that can surprise you. I mean, the classic example of this for some years has been the way that Neil Gorsuch, who's about as conservative as they come in a lot of ways, has this deep, apparently quite genuine commitment to tribal rights.

He's been seen as a champion in that area and apparently legitimately so. So that's maybe an extreme example of where there's some corner of constitutional law that people are committed to in one way or the other. But you also saw it in Rahimi. There were a lot of concurrences in that case, and there did seem to be a gap of one sort of the other between how Amy Coney Barrett conceived of the historical question and how certainly how Clarence Thomas did, but also how Brett Kavanaugh did. She more emphasized the original meaning rather than the search for this colonial era law or the other.

And she may be surprising in other ways, too, during some of the abortion arguments, although she seems as a matter of principle to be opposed to abortion in one way or the other.

But she also didnt seem completely on board with women dying on the emergency room table. And it was interesting that a lot of her questions were more knowledgeable about even just how women's bodies work.

Then you maybe have been used to hearing in arguments in front of the Supreme Court. I don't know how she's going to develop as a justice in the years to come, but I've become more curious about that question. But the other aspect to that is that it's not clear that there's an entirely positive dialogue going on within.

Theres been a lot of reporting about how theres since, as you might remember, the Dobbs decision, an early version of it was leaked, that theres been more distrust within the court. It does seem that it may be more of an issue for them to really come to consensuses, and theres at least some snippishness that seems to be coming through in the decisions that does not actually bode well for the court being a body that can somehow kind of help the country in a productive way get through what might be a year of real discord with the election if the election's contested. So it's a bit worrisome.

Tyler Foggatt
Amy, I'd like to ask you about how the Supreme Court, you know, might be one of the major issues that the candidates talk about in the 2024 election. But first, we're going to take a quick break.

You'll hear more of the political scene from the New Yorker in just a moment.

Unknown
Hey, I'm Brian Selter, host of Inside the Hive from Vanity Fair. This week, we're going inside Steve Bannon's war room, where he rallies the Trump faithful and promises revenge.

Ketanji Brown Jackson
War room is basically his live streaming fiefdom. And he kind of works on a schedule that is very uniquely his own. I think he was one of the first right wing media figures to truly understand the reach that one could have with a podcast like his.

Unknown
My full conversation with Tina Nguyen of Puck and Isaac Arnsdorf of the Washington Post is out now on inside the Hive from Vanity Fair, available wherever you listen.

Tyler Foggatt
So a couple of weeks ago, Biden held this big star studded fundraiser in LA with George Clooney and Barack Obama. And he was on stage with Jimmy Kimmel. And during that conversation, he said this.

Amy Davidson Sorkin
The idea that if he's re elected, he's going to appoint two more flags upside down is really, I really mean it.

Tyler Foggatt
So he's talking about, you know, the idea of Trump appointing two more justices who are flying flags upside down. I'm wondering if you can give us a quick run through of what he's referring to there, you know, the scandal with Alito's wife. And then I'm wondering if you just think that this is an effective strategy for Biden to be focusing on this and on the court as something that might bring voters out to the polls.

Amy Davidson Sorkin
The story came out earlier this year that at some point during the pandemic, Justice Alito's wife had flown an upside down flag on a flagpole at their home. And the context of this was apparently a dispute with her neighbors who had put up political signs as well. And she was flying this flag that has had different meanings over history.

She said it was a sign of distress. Ships at sea was also carried by stop the steel protesters. Alito's response has been, my wife is fond of flying flags. I am not. She's a co owner of this house. I can't stop her from flying flags. There's a lot of discussion, obviously, about whether it's appropriate, but there's an aspect to it that as scandals go, it's a little tricky because you do get into this area of the justices wife and their home.

So I find this to be kind of both an important argument but also a complicated argument for Biden to be making. Theres not currently an opening on the Supreme Court as there was when Trump was running for president in 2016, you know, when Mitch McConnell kept a seat open basically for Trump. Yeah. So what hes referring to in terms of the number of seats is really actuarial guesswork. There are three justices who are 70 or older. In fact, one of them, happy birthday, Sonia Sotomayor. I think today is her 70th birthday. And those justices are Sonya Sotomayor, Samuel Alito, and Clarence Thomas. And I believe that John Roberts will turn 70 in the next year.

Are any of them going to be leaving the court? But thats a guess. You know, theres an idea that if Trump is reelected, maybe some of the conservative justices will see their moment to have somebody who can fulfill their legacy and retire.

I think that a lot of justices were chastened by the example of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who did not retire and was replaced by a conservative after she died.

But is that going to happen?

Thats a little unsure. And if, say, they do retire, if Trump is elected, if Biden is elected, will they stay on? The other thing is that anything can happen with any of these justices, no matter their ages, at any time. So its always an important argument in any election that the president could have the power, and you dont know how often that president necessarily will exercise it, appointing another justice.

What I see as slightly tricky here is that we have a man whos over 80 arguing that theres a risk that justices who are over 70 are not going to make it through his term.

So thats where I see it as a slightly risky argument for Biden to be pushing too much.

Tyler Foggatt
That's interesting, because I guess I was thinking that even if there isn't, you know, like a mass exodus of justices after the election and, you know, later this year, that by invoking the court, Biden is still getting at the idea that the court is, is not only incredibly powerful, but has also, you know, decided cases in ways that a lot of Americans disagree with. And it seems like, you know, kind of focusing on the court as its own single issue might be a way to get at all of the single issue voters who are out there making decisions based on, you know, abortion, abortion or guns or gay and trans rights.

Amy Davidson Sorkin
I think it's really true, because, again, as we've talked about, yeah, Dobbs has been decided, Bruhn has been decided. But all their progeny, all the cases that have sprung from them are still on their way to the court, making their way to the court. What does it mean? What's it going to mean to people as they go about their lives? That's still being worked out. So Dobbs is not over as far as the Supreme Court is concerned. And Dobbs certainly isnt over as far as Congress is concerned or individual states are concerned. And, you know, that is really an issue that people are going to vote around one way or the other. But two other things about that. Again, no matter the ages, there could be an opening on the court, and its a reminder of the power of the presidency.

Its also, though, the second thing, a reminder to ask ourselves if we let the Supreme Court, have, we let individuals, individual justices become figures that are just too big in some way.

We're delving into flags in their house and their family, and we have lifetime appointment for Supreme Court justices. There's been a tendency because of that to appoint relatively young justices so that their legacy can last for decades.

Maybe it's time to think about term limits. You know, those things aren't written into the Constitution. There is a fair amount of flexibility.

We've made each individual justice like almost this huge brand unto themselves and like movement unto themselves. And maybe that's not particularly healthy either.

Tyler Foggatt
Do you think the justices are worried about that or about the general politicization of the court?

Amy Davidson Sorkin
I think the justices are worried about a lot of related issues. John Roberts, you know, is known as somebody who cares a lot about the court as an institution about its credibility, but in a more sort of individualized way, that the justices have also been worried about their personal safety, and theres.

Tyler Foggatt
A surprising lack of security for them. Like I remember reading about, I forget which justice it was. But one of them was, I think, like robbed at knife point while on a run in Mexico.

Theyre not surrounded by, by secret service the way that Biden is, I think.

Amy Davidson Sorkin
But I think that that's changing a little bit.

And I wonder also how healthy it is for our democracy if the justices stop being able to interact in a normal way with their fellow citizens, because if they go into their own bubble.

Tyler Foggatt
It'S already so shadowy.

Amy Davidson Sorkin
Yeah. So shadowy. There's a lot less transparency about what actually happens there. The fact that we're sitting here in the last week of June saying we have no idea what's coming tomorrow or Friday, Thursday or Friday, that there's this annual drama of how are the structures of our democracy going to change this year? And waiting for these decisions. We haven't really talked about it, but there's a huge issue that the Supreme Court's expected to decide in the next few days concerning what's known as the chevron doctrine, which basically is about the ability of agencies to interpret laws that are seen as ambiguous. And that case has the potential to really change how our federal government operates.

So we think of the January 6 cases as the biggest cases of this term. The Chevron cases might in some ways be just as big. In terms of the longer arch of history, I should say that the presidential immunity case isn't the only January 6 related case we're waiting for. We're also waiting for one called Fisher, which is basically about whether the Justice Department overreached in using a certain law that was originally grew out of concern about financial misdoings by companies, whether they were wrong in using that law against January 6 rioters and against Donald Trump, whos also been indicted on some charges related to it.

Tyler Foggatt
How do you reconcile the chief justice concerns and also the Supreme Courts concerns with seeming impartial with the courts decision to take on so many controversial, high profile, consequential cases that where sometimes the decision to take on the case itself almost seems like a political act? Like the immunity case, for example. I mean, I know that some of these cases, they kind of have to go to the court because it's like, who else is going to decide these things? But I do feel like, I mean, we just saw that next term, the Supreme Court has announced that it intends to hear a case on health care for transgender minors. And it seems like constantly they're wading into the most contentious ideological and culture war issues, sometimes seemingly by choice.

Amy Davidson Sorkin
Yeah, I think there are a couple of answers to that, and it's a great question. And the simplest answer is, that's the job, right? These cases get there, and they're the ones who have to decide it when there is a really hard case.

The other answer, though, is, lower courts are all over the place right now. Some really radical decisions are coming to the court, and then the Supreme Court can either let them stand or take them. So they're making a radical decision one way or the other.

And part of that is a problem of their own making. With Brune, they added this uncertainty. They remade it, and they're dealing with what they've done. But part of it is also that the judiciary changes with each presidency.

Some of the cases that are reaching them now are coming from judges who were appointed by Donald Trump, and those judges are testing limits, too. And the other answer is that our political system seems under strain in a way that it hasn't been for a while. And when that happens, cases arise, and those have to go somewhere. You know, it's a wave that's more turbulent than has been true in the past, and that makes for a lot of difficult decisions and a lot of consequential decisions.

Tyler Foggatt
That's interesting. A turbulent wave that, in some ways, they cause themselves.

Amy Davidson Sorkin
Yeah. And in some ways, other factors in our politics have caused, too. Yeah.

Tyler Foggatt
Trump.

Others, too, but also Trump.

Amy Davidson Sorkin
Yeah.

Tyler Foggatt
Well, thank you so much, Amy.

Amy Davidson Sorkin
Thank you so much, Tyler.

Tyler Foggatt
Amy Davidson Sorkin is a staff writer for the New Yorker. You can read her writing about news, politics and the Supreme Court on newyorker.com dot.

This has been the political scene. I'm Tyler Fox.

This episode was produced by Michelle Moses and Sheena Ozaki and edited by Gianna Palmer with production assistants from Jake Loomis and Mike Kutchman.

Our executive producer is Stephen Valentino. Chris Bannon is Conde Ness, head of global audio. Our theme music is by Allison Layton Brown. Enjoy your week and happy 4 July.

I'm Alex Schwartz.

Ketanji Brown Jackson
I'm Nomi Frey.

Unknown
I'm Vincent Cunningham. And this is critics at large, a New Yorker podcast for the culturally curious.

Tyler Foggatt
Each week we're going to talk about a big idea that's showing up across the cultural landscape, and we'll trace it through all the mediums we love, books, movies, television, music, art.

Ketanji Brown Jackson
And I always want to talk about celebrity gossip, too, of course.

What are you guys doing? Excited to cover in the next few.

Unknown
Months, there's a new translation of the Iliad that's coming out. Emily Wilson, really excited to see whether I can read the Iliad again, whether I'm that literate. I mean, the jury is out.

Tyler Foggatt
I can't wait to hear Adam driver go again in an italian accent in Michael Mann's Ferrari.

Ketanji Brown Jackson
He can't stop.

Tyler Foggatt
I mean, and bless him. I can't wait.

Ketanji Brown Jackson
Molto bene.

Tyler Foggatt
Molto bene.

Unknown
We hope you'll join us for new episodes each Thursday. Follow critics at large today, wherever you get podcasts.

Ketanji Brown Jackson
You really don't want to miss this. Don't, don't miss this.

Tyler Foggatt
Don't miss it.

Ketanji Brown Jackson
See you soon.

Unknown
From PRX.

What You Need to Know About 2024's Most Significant Supreme Court Decisions

Primary Topic

Episode Summary

Main Takeaways

Episode Chapters

1: Introduction to the Term's Decisions

2: Presidential Immunity and Trump

3: Impact on Gun Rights and Abortion

Actionable Advice

About This Episode

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Transcript