Supreme Court Brinkmanship

Linda Greenhouse on the 2020-2021 Supreme Court—and the changes to come

Photo of President Donald Trump and Supreme Court Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett

Polarizing pick: President Donald Trump applauds newly confirmed associate justice Amy Coney Barrett, October 26, 2020.

Photograph by Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images

 

Linda Greenhouse ’68 covered the Supreme Court for the New York Times for 30 years (winning a Pulitzer Prize for her work). Now, continuing to observe the court from a post at Yale, she has crafted a quick history of the year of Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation to succeed Ruth Bader Ginsburg, which capped a three-decade project to move the judiciary in a conservative direction—and outlines the stakes in pending cases. Justice on the Brink (Random House, $28) is, in a way, an account of the politicization of a branch of government that has at least tried to appear apolitical. (Her book invites reading alongside The Authority of the Court and the Peril of Politics, by associate justice Stephen Breyer, LL.B. ’64, profiled in “A Workable Democracy,” March-April 2017). She obviously harbors doubts about the jurisprudence to come. From the epilogue:

 

It’s tempting to think of a single term as a snapshot of a fixed period in the Supreme Court’s life. A more accurate image is that of a series of frames in a moving picture in which members of the court continually navigate among past, present, and future, deciding cases they accepted during the previous term and adding new cases for decision in the next. The end of a term is…just a pause in a steady flow.

The death of the court’s leading liberal and her nearly instantaneous replacement by…Barrett, a conservative 40 years her junior, jolted the flow off course, up-ending expectations for the term that was just getting underway in the shadow of a dangerous pandemic and a contested national election. Cases aleady accepted for decision—health care, religion—under one set assumptions suddenly looked different, either more hopeful or more dangerous, depending on one’s perspective. New petitions the court might have passed over—guns, abortion—now tempted.…

In the end, it was not quite the term conservatives had hoped for, nor the term that liberals had most feared. A Gallup poll released in late July revealed an unexpected turn in public opinion. What was surprising was not that overall approval of the court’s performance had dipped to just under 50 percent, down from 58 percent a year earlier; all institutions of government took a hit during a tumultuous year. What was startling was that after all that had happened, Democrats and Republicans shared as identical view of the court. This a sharp contrast to just a few years earlier when…midway through Donald Trump’s term, Republican approval of the court soared to 72 percent while Democratic approval fell to 38 percent. The change was “notable,” the Gallup analyst wrote, perhaps reflecting the particular mix of rulings that “may have helped keep Republicans from viewing the court as a conservative ally, or Democrats from perceiving it as too ideologically extreme.” But he added: “Today’s symmetry in Republicans’ and Democrats’ ratings of the court may be put to the test in the court’s next term.”

Everyone had something to hope and something to fear from a court on the brink.

Related topics

You might also like

Making Money Funny

Matt Levine’s spunky Bloomberg column

Reconstructing the Berlin Wall

David Leo Rice explores the strange, unseen forces shaping our world.

An Original Magna Carta, Hidden in Plain Sight

A rare original surfaces at Harvard at an “almost providential” moment. 

Most popular

“Do You Find That Reasonable?” Harvard Undergraduates Discuss a Changing University

A student panel grapples—civilly—with shifting policies and differing opinions.

The Professor Who Quantified Democracy

Erica Chenoweth’s data shows how—and when—authoritarians fall.

Harvard Adopts Reforms as Higher Ed Turmoil Continues

University creates new “interfaith engagement” role; Columbia, Brown settle with the government.

Explore More From Current Issue

David Souter

Remembering David Souter ’61, LL.B. ’66

Four 2025 Centennial Medal recipients standing outdoors in a row, smiling, with greenery and a brick building behind them.

Four alumni of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences are honored.

group of students perform on a stage in front of a crowd

In comedy groups, students find ways to be absurd, present, and a little less self-conscious.