Nobody was more obsessed with President Trump’s win-loss record at the Supreme Court last month than the president himself, who kept score on social media.
He declared a ruling confirming presidential power to fire over political differences was “the biggest and most consequential.” The decision allowing political party committees to coordinate spending with candidates was “a big win for Republicans” and also “the First Amendment.”
Allowing states to restrict women’s sports leagues to biological males was also a “big win.”
His setback in trying to fire a Biden appointee to the Federal Reserve Board was “strictly procedural.” The high court’s refusal to review a $5.8 million defamation claim against him was surprising.
The court’s ruling allowing states to count mailed ballots received days or weeks after Election Day was a “tremendous loss.” And the ruling striking down his birthright citizenship executive order was a “massive … win” — for China.
Overall, Mr. Trump notched some major victories for presidential power under the Constitution. His stance also prevailed on immigration law and politics, including a major victory on redistricting and the use of race to draw lines under the Voting Rights Act.
But his actual policy agenda fared more poorly with the justices, who swatted him on the nose over two of his biggest reaches in tariffs, where they said he stretched the law, and birthright citizenship, where they found he trampled on the Constitution’s 14th Amendment.
And at the center of many of those rulings was Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.
He wrote the key opinions in the tariffs and birthright citizenship rulings as well as a pair of decisions that recognized the president’s expansive — though not unlimited — power to fire people in the executive branch and so-called “independent agencies.”
“Here it feels like every big case it’s constantly Chief Justice Roberts,” Derek Muller, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame, said at a post-Supreme Court term review hosted by the Federalist Society.
Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh also tied as the court members who were in the majority the most, according to SCOTUSBlog’s review of the term.
Josh Blackman, professor at South Texas College of Law and author of several casebooks on high court decisions, said Justice Kavanaugh, a Trump pick, has emerged as a distinct conservative voice.
“The story of this year is Kavanaugh came out more as a right-of-center justice than he was in the past,” Mr. Blackman told The Washington Times.
Scholars in recent years divided the court into a 3-3-3 breakdown, with the three Democratic appointees on the left, the chief justice, Justice Kavanaugh and Justice Amy Coney Barrett, another Trump pick, at the center-right and the three other GOP appointees further right.
But most agree that didn’t play out this year.
Justice Kavanaugh joined the chief justice on both decisions on presidential firings, granting him wide powers to nix people over political reasons but suggesting he cannot summarily dismiss people “for cause” without giving them some process to challenge it.
Justice Barrett dissented in the “for cause” ruling.
She also joined the chief justice on birthright citizenship and a decision allowing states to count mail ballots that arrive weeks after Election Day, and the tariff ruling earlier this year. Justice Kavanaugh dissented on both.
And she sided with the chief justice and the three Democratic appointees on the birthright citizenship ruling, while Justice Kavanaugh took his own path, saying that Mr. Trump’s executive order was illegal under a 1940 law but didn’t violate the Constitution.
Mr. Blackman said Justice Kavanaugh peppers his opinions, even in cases where Mr. Trump didn’t prevail, with ideas about how he might achieve his goals a different way. That was true in the tariffs case and the for-cause firing decision.
And in an earlier ruling on immigration agents stopping and questioning migrants, Justice Kavanaugh was the only one to write and lay out parameters Homeland Security should follow to keep the stops legal. The media quickly dubbed the encounters “Kavanaugh stops.”
“It’s almost like he’s signaling to Trump, ’You can’t do this, but you can do Plan B,’” Mr. Blackman said.
All told, the high court held oral arguments in 58 cases and issued 56 opinions. Several of the cases were combined into the same ruling.
Of those rulings, 44% were decided unanimously. That’s about average for the last couple of decades, SCOTUSBlog said.
In 23% of the cases, the court split 6-3 with the three Democratic appointees dissenting.
Justice Clarence Thomas was again the most frequent writer, with six majority opinions, 15 concurrences and seven dissents.
Twenty-five years after President George H.W. Bush picked him, he has become the court’s trailblazing conservative, pioneering arguments that become the court’s position years or even decades later.
That was the case in this year’s ruling overturning a 2001 precedent and allowing greater coordination in campaign spending between party political committees and their candidates. Justice Thomas’s dissent in that 2001 case became the basis for the majority ruling this time around.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the most prolific writer among the Democrat-appointed members, with six majority opinions, 10 concurrences and 10 dissents, according to SCOTUSBlog.
All six of Chief Justice Roberts’ opinions were for the majority.
