The Supreme Court’s Surprising Term

The Supreme Court term that began last fall has spanned several epochal upheavals at once: the second peak and wind-down of the coronavirus pandemic, the 2020 Presidential election, and its dramatic aftermath, including the violent mob attempt to block the certification of the outcome. During the term, oral arguments were conducted entirely by telephone, a low-tech option that had the effect of keeping the Justices less visually accessible to the public. Amy Coney Barrett took the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat, creating a six-Justice conservative majority that seemed to insure losses for liberals for at least a generation. In response to strong outcry from Democrats at that prospect, President Biden created a commission to study possible reforms to the Court, such as adding more Justices to it, and limiting their terms.

But, if the expectation was that the country’s political divisions would be mirrored in starkly split decisions, it mostly was not met. The Court didn’t even attempt to decide the 2020 Presidential election, as Donald Trump wanted it to and as many feared that it would. Instead, the Justices repeatedly defied expectations, with conservatives and liberals together forming majorities in high-profile cases in order to avoid or defer the fighting of deeper wars.