The Supreme Court closed a victorious judicial course for Donald Trump last Friday in the same way he did with the previous one in July 2024: giving more power to the president, and with him, the institution represents.
If then his nine magistrates decided to expand Trump’s immunity in the performance of his position – consciously, in the decisions he made in the months that led to the assault on the Capitol -, something that raided his way back to the White House, a few days ago, cut the power of federal judges to oppose the agenda of an executive in full expansion. They may no longer issue precautionary suspensions that stop the effects of Trump’s orders throughout the country while the courts decide, a time that can be extended for months or years.
Both sentences were resolved in the same way: with six votes in favor, those of the conservative judges of the Supreme, and three against those of the liberals. One of the last things Trump did before losing the 2020 elections against Joe Biden was to appoint the substitute for progressive judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died in September. That unbalanced the composition of the high court and allowed the Republican to leave a mark that will feel for decades, given that the positions of the Supreme are life.
In addition to that last designated, Amy Coney Barrett, who signed the ruling that ends with the power of the lower judges of opposing the presidential agenda, Trump managed to place two other magistrates: Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. Thanks to that inflation of appointments in a single mandate, the Supreme Court has an unpublished conservative supermayer since the thirties.
The course that now ends was the first of this court with Trump in the White House, and the work of its magistrates has been defined both for that fact and the impatience of the president of the United States, to which they have granted a triumph after another in urgent issues for their administration; Among them, the one who studied if federal judges had exceeded their powers by stopping the application of a decree signed on Trump’s first day in the Oval Office. With him, the president intended
The Supreme did not enter the bottom of the matter (the constitutionality of attacking a right recognized right or the fourteenth amendment), but did issue a ruling of enormous draft, which, according to Paul Collins, a law professor at the University of Massachusets and expert in the politicization of the high court, “alters the balance of powers in US democracy.”
Rule
In total, the Trump administration has requested in its first five months that the supreme acts of urgency 19 times, the same as Biden’s did it in four years. That is explained because the current president is beating records of governing with a coup of executive power: he has signed. Also, because the main resistance to its aggressive agenda has been so far in the lower courts, which have admitted more than 300 demands against Trump administration at this time.
These 19 resolutions of the Supreme Court have served to reverse precautionary suspensions of measures that strip immigrants of their rights or that allow them to deport them without judicial intervention or third countries, such as Sudan; that authorize the army or to unprotect officials in front of that chainsaw of public spending called Government Efficiency Department (Doge).
Emergency resolutions do not enjoy good reputation among jurists: their critics refer to them as “shadow files” (shadow dockets). They usually imply scarce deliberation they often do not incorporate argument or come without sign. They are, in theory, temporary (not always in practice). This course have grown exponentially (from 44 last year at 113).
The “merit files” (merit dockets) They are the cases studied without haste (46 this season that now ends). They are usually planned from the beginning. They are discussed in an oral view at the Supreme headquarters in Washington and this gives way to a debate of months in which the magistrates have time to write their opinions, majority and particular. In these files, the Supreme has confirmed this year his decision to delve into the conservative revolution that began with the entrance of Barrett in 2020 and that had its most popular example in the repeal of the right to abortion at the federal level two years later.
They have done it with sentences such as the one that allows parents to veto in their children’s schools (a ruling that was resolved last Friday with a 6-3), which authorizes (also Friday, 6-3) or the one that allows states to veto gender treatments to trans minors (last week and, again, 6-3).
Despite the obvious ideological confrontation within the Supreme, there have also been cases decided unanimously. Three examples: for enriching themselves with illegal trafficking; the one in which they gave permission to a heterosexual white woman who felt discriminated against in her work against two homosexual people; or one in which they endorsed the prohibition of Tiktok in the United States (it was useless; Trump allowed the Chinese company to continue operating until today).
Last Friday, the last day of the course, the long vacations of the magistrates began, who do not have to return to work until October. It will be another transcendental course, the fifth with conservative supermayoria. Pam Bondi, attorney general, ventured at a press conference last Friday that will also be the year in which the Supreme Court decides on the right to citizenship by birth.
If Bondi is right, it will undoubtedly be one of the most popular cases. Among those who are already planned for 2025-2026 there are two others that will also speak. In one, the supreme could change the rules of electoral financing and end certain stops to the money that enters the campaigns, an old republican aspiration. The participation of trans women in women’s sport will be another of those controversial issues that will star in the course.
The high court has three requests around that controversial issue. And that “could be skirmish in the cultural war [que se vive en Estados Unidos] Of greater profile since the case ”that knocked out abortion, lawyer John Elwood on the Scotusblog website. After all, bets on whether the Supreme Supreme will give a new victory are open.
