The News
The US Supreme Court kicked off its nine-month term Monday with major cases lined up about “ghost guns,” trans rights, and pornography, as well as unresolved questions about whether the court will end up playing a decisive role in the upcoming presidential election.
On Tuesday, the court will hear a challenge to a federal rule banning so-called “ghost guns,” untraceable homemade weapons that the Biden administration aims to regulate in the same way it regulates commercial gun sales.
The court will also hear the administration’s challenge to a ban for gender care for minors in Tennessee that could have consequences for transgender youth across the US, along with cases about police use of force and age limits for online pornography.
SIGNALS
Will the court have a role in the elections?
The Supreme Court declined Monday to take up a case from Pennsylvania Republicans that challenged the administration’s efforts to expand voting access, but it remains to be seen whether it will have to face major decisions about the elections. Some experts believe that the justices’ slim docket suggests that “they had to make space for the possibility that there would be election cases that they would have to address,” a legal expert told Politico. Several lawsuits are already underway on both Democratic and Republican sides, NBC News reported, and former President Donald Trump’s repeated refusal to say whether he would accept the election results has led many to suspect that the court could be forced to take on a decisive role if there are contested ballots or other legal challenges after the November election.
Supreme Court’s legitimacy will be in the limelight
So far, the court has yet to take up any blockbuster cases, meaning that the “real issue in the new term is about the court itself” and its “increasingly eroding credibility,” two legal experts wrote in The New York Times. The court’s approval ratings are near record lows following a number of controversial rulings and reports about the ties between some justices and the conservative movement. To regain its legitimacy, the court should do more to ensure its recently adopted ethics code is followed, tone down its emphasis on originalist readings of the law that draw on “on arcane historical sources ranging from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century,” and justices should make a greater effort to avoid voting strictly along partisan lines, a Harvard legal professor argued in Bloomberg.
Supreme Court reform could be on the agenda if Harris wins
Kamala Harris has supported President Biden’s call for Supreme Court reform, warning of a “clear crisis of confidence” facing the institution. Biden’s proposal before he pulled out of the presidential race included term limits for justices and a binding code of conduct. During her time in the Senate, Harris laid out “a more forceful case for institutional reform than perhaps any other recent candidate,” The American Prospect wrote. Even though she has shared relatively little about how she would seek to shape the court, critics of the court are “cautiously optimistic” that Harris would be more proactive than Biden on reform, Politico reported. But for any sweeping changes to be possible, Democrats would need to win control of the White House and both houses of Congress.