If you’re a Supreme Court nerd looking for something, well, unexpected to watch this weekend, we’ve got you covered. Yesterday, TED released Neal Katyal’s talk on the tariffs case, in which he explores how he used AI to help him prepare for oral argument and what he learned from the case about “performing under pressure.”
At the Court
In response to requests from Danco Laboratories and GenBioPro, Justice Samuel Alito temporarily paused a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit reinstating the requirement that the abortion pill mifepristone be dispensed only in person. On Thursday, Louisiana, which brought the suit, urged the court to leave the 5th Circuit’s order in place. For more on the filing, see the On Site section below.
The court has indicated that it may release opinions on Thursday, May 14, at 10 a.m. EDT. We will be live blogging that morning beginning at 9:30.
Morning Reads
Justices to testify before Senate appropriators
Samantha Handler, Punchbowl News (paywalled)
Citing “multiple sources,” Punchbowl News reported on Thursday that “Supreme Court Justices will testify to the Senate Appropriations Committee on May 20” but noted that “[i]t’s unclear which justices will appear.” The May 20 hearing “will focus on the Court’s FY2027 budget request. ... Of particular interest will be the Court’s request for $14.6 million in additional funding for the justices’ security.” According to Punchbowl News, “[t]his will be the first time any of the justices have testified at a Senate hearing since 2011.”
Federal court rules against new global tariffs Trump imposed after loss at the Supreme Court
Associated Press
On Thursday, a “split three-judge panel of the Court of International Trade” held that President Donald Trump “overstepped the tariff power” available to him under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 when he used that law to impose 10% global tariffs after the Supreme Court struck down his original tariffs in February. According to the Associated Press, “[t]he court’s decision directly blocked the collection of tariffs from three plaintiffs – the state of Washington and two businesses, spice company Burlap & Barrel and toy company Basic Fun!,” and one of the attorneys who represented the businesses said “‘[i]t’s not clear’ whether other businesses would have to continue to pay.” “If the administration appeals Thursday’s decision, as expected, it would first turn to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, based in Washington, and then, potentially, the Supreme Court.”
Paul Clement’s Dominant Term Boosts His Supreme Court Legacy
Jordan Fischer, Bloomberg Law
This term, Paul Clement made nine appearances at the Supreme Court lectern. “Absent Elizabeth Prelogar’s 10 appearances as solicitor general in 2023, no one has beaten that number in the past three decades, according to a Bloomberg Law analysis.” By his own count, Clement has “notched 128 arguments before the court ... bringing Edwin Kneedler’s modern record of 160 into view.” “At some point you’re conscious of how many arguments you have, but I don’t think you ever lose sight that any chance to argue before the court is an amazing opportunity,” Clement told Bloomberg Law. “A lot of excellent lawyers never get the chance to argue one.”
North Carolina man pleads guilty to doxing Supreme Court justice
Max Rego, The Hill
On Wednesday, Kyle Andrew Edwards, 59, “pleaded guilty to posting” a Supreme Court justice’s “home address online with the intent to threaten, intimidate or incite a crime of violence against them,” according to a Justice Department press release. “Doxxing is dangerous. It exposes officials to all sorts of people that may cause harm, and that harm may be even worse than the doxxer expected or intended,” U.S. Attorney Russ Ferguson said in the release. “That is why we take it seriously.” According to The Hill, “Edwards posted the” address and related threats “a day after the high court vacated a federal judge’s order blocking the Trump administration from using the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelans.” The Justice Department’s release noted that the “case was investigated by the Supreme Court of the United States Police - Protective Intelligence Unit.”
Did This Appeals Court Go Rogue on Abortion Pills?
Adam Liptak, The New York Times (paywalled)
In his newsletter for The New York Times, Adam Liptak highlighted the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit’s decision to “severely limit[] access ... to a widely used abortion pill,” a decision that is now in front of the Supreme Court on its interim docket. “The Fifth Circuit, which is dominated by Republican appointees, including six appointed by President Trump, has issued ambitious rulings in recent years that have met a frosty reception at the Supreme Court,” Liptak wrote. “Indeed, cleaning up after the Fifth Circuit, which seems determined to outflank the justices to their right, has become a major part of the Supreme Court’s docket.”
On Site
Interim Docket
Louisiana urges Supreme Court to leave in place order barring mailing of abortion pill
The state of Louisiana on Thursday afternoon urged the Supreme Court in Danco Laboratories v. Louisiana and GenBioPro v. Louisiana to leave in place an order by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit that prohibits the mailing of mifepristone, one of two drugs used in medication abortions, which are in turn the most common form of abortion in the United States.
Contributor Corner
Eleven things about the second-longest-serving justice of all time
In his Empirical SCOTUS column, Adam Feldman crunched the numbers from Justice Clarence Thomas’ career and pulled together “some of the most notable facts about this incredibly influential (and polarizing) justice,” including his most cited opinions and the issue area he writes on most frequently.
Contributor Corner
The extraordinary power sought by the Trump administration in the TPS case isn’t anything new in immigration law
In his Immigration Matters column, César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández reflected on two cases on whether the executive branch can “give and take away legal relief known as Temporary Protected Status, free from any judicial oversight.” A ruling stating that the administration has this power “would be extraordinary, but it wouldn’t be the first time that the court has given immigration officials remarkable power,” he wrote.
Podcasts
Advisory Opinions
Congress Did Something!
During this “Callais-a-palooza,” Sarah Isgur and David French dig into Louisiana v. Callais, the Supreme Court decision that struck down Louisiana’s congressional map as unconstitutional, and then answer listener questions about the case.
Divided Argument
Majordoma
Will Baude and Dan Epps also tackled Louisiana v. Callais in their latest episode, grappling with what the court said, what it quietly overruled, and why the reasoning matters far beyond Louisiana.
A Closer Look
Chief Justice John Roberts
In our series on the chief justices, we have arrived, at last, at the current chief justice, John Glover Roberts, Jr.
Roberts was born in January 1955, in Buffalo, New York, and grew up in Long Beach, Indiana. He went to Notre Dame Elementary School (years later, his eighth-grade math teacher would tell The New York Times that she used Roberts as a barometer to see if other students understood a new math curriculum) before attending La Lumiere School, a Catholic boarding school in La Porte, Indiana. There, he captained the football team, wrestled, and graduated first in his class. His father was a steel plant manager and his mother a homemaker, and Roberts worked during the summer on the floor of his father’s steel mill to help pay for college.
Roberts then attended Harvard College as a history major, graduating summa cum laude in three years, and went on to Harvard Law School, where he served as managing editor of the Harvard Law Review and graduated magna cum laude in 1979.
Following Harvard, Roberts clerked for Judge Henry Friendly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit. (Chief Justice Warren Burger once said of Friendly that he could not identify “any judicial colleague more highly qualified to have come to the Supreme Court of the United States.”) Roberts then clerked for then-associate Justice William Rehnquist during the 1980-81 term. After his clerkship, Roberts spent two stints at the Reagan White House, first as Special Assistant to Attorney General William French Smith from 1981 to 1982, and then as Associate Counsel to President Ronald Reagan from 1982 to 1986, before entering private practice at the law firm Hogan & Hartson. Roberts left Hogan to serve as Principal Deputy Solicitor General under Ken Starr from 1989 to 1993, becoming, by Starr’s account, “my very closest, most trusted adviser.” Returning to Hogan in 1993, Roberts argued 39 cases before the Supreme Court, winning 25 of them.
In 1992, President George H.W. Bush nominated Roberts to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, but – despite Roberts’ impeccable qualifications – the nomination lapsed without the Senate ever holding a vote. President George W. Bush nominated him again in 2001, and Roberts was confirmed unanimously in 2003. He authored 49 opinions before Bush nominated him to the Supreme Court in July 2005, initially to fill the vacancy of retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. When Rehnquist, who was by then chief justice, died on Sept. 3, 2005, Bush withdrew that nomination and re-nominated Roberts to the center chair. The full Senate then confirmed him 78-22 – which was a significantly wider margin than his predecessor and former boss received. At the age of 50, Roberts was also the youngest individual to be confirmed as chief since John Marshall.
At his confirmation hearing, Roberts delivered the now well-quoted line, “I will remember that it’s my job to call balls and strikes, and not to pitch or bat.” On the bench, Roberts has authored more than his share of significant opinions – and there is much controversy over whether his rhetoric has matched reality. In 2012, Roberts wrote the majority opinion in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, which upheld the Affordable Care Act by finding the individual mandate to be unconstitutional under the commerce clause, but valid as a tax. In 2013, Roberts’ majority opinion in Shelby County v. Holder struck down the Voting Rights Act’s pre-existing coverage formula. In 2023, Roberts wrote the 6-2 opinion in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which held that race-conscious admissions at colleges and universities violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. In 2024, Roberts authored, for a 6-3 majority, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, overturning the 40-year-old Chevron doctrine, which had courts defer to federal agencies’ interpretations of ambiguous statutes. And later that year, in Trump v. United States, Roberts wrote for a 6-3 court holding that former presidents receive absolute immunity from prosecution for acts within their core constitutional powers and “presumptive immunity” for other official acts. Most recently, Roberts authored Learning Resources v. Trump, which struck down President Donald Trump’s tariffs in a 6-3 decision. (Roberts also wrote a concurrence in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, in which he would have declined to overrule Roe v. Wade, and penned the lead dissent in Obergefell v. Hodges, in which the court recognized a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.)
Last term, Roberts was in the majority in 95% of all cases – the most of any justice – and did not write a single separate opinion. And although Roberts typically speaks through his opinions, he has been somewhat outspoken (by his own standards, at least) in defending judicial independence. After Trump called a judge an “Obama judge” in 2018, for example, Roberts issued a written statement noting that “We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges.” Roberts also presided over Trump's first impeachment trial in 2020 – making him, like Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase and Rehnquist before him, one of only three chief justices in history to perform that duty. And, no doubt to Roberts’ chagrin, there has been no shortage of drama during his tenure, from the Dobbs leak to recent tension between the justices themselves – all during a time where the public is largely skeptical of how the court is fulfilling its duties.
SCOTUS Quote
MR. DREEBEN: “What we want is a standard that holds accountable people for the ordinary and natural meaning of the words that they say in context –”
CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: “Well, but in context is right. What is it? Is it a reasonable person and the examples that were given of the, you know, teenagers on the internet, or is it a reasonable teenager on the internet?”
(Laughter.)
MR. DREEBEN: “If there is such a thing.”
— Elonis v. United States (2014)
Ask Amy
What is the strangest thing you’ve ever witnessed during an oral argument?
Things inside the courtroom rarely get very strange. Everything is highly choreographed, and there is a small army of police officers there to jump in to stop any misbehavior by members of the public. One of the more unusual things I’ve seen happened just recently, when Chief Justice John Roberts interrupted oral arguments to tell us that there would soon be “a flyover of four planes” – apparently a tribute to King Charles, who was visiting Washington that day. Roberts explained that the planes might be loud, and he didn’t want anyone to be “alarmed.” Alas, we did not hear the planes at all.
I’ve been in the courtroom a few times when members of the audience interrupted arguments to protest – abortion-rights protesters in 2022 (during an argument that relatively few reporters attended) and on the fifth anniversary of the court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, to name a few. There was also the protester during the 2015 oral arguments in the challenge to state bans on same-sex marriage who shouted that anyone who supported same-sex marriage would “burn in hell for eternity.” Unlike most of the other protesters I’ve seen, he did not go quietly; even after police officers dragged him from the room, we could hear him screaming for several minutes.
I’ve also seen some unusual choices at oral arguments. In a 2004 case involving age discrimination, for example, the attorney defending the city accused of discrimination told the justices – whose average age was then 70 – that “our mental and physical capacities … deteriorate over time.”
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg shot back, “Verdi wrote Falstaff … when he was in his late 70s.”
But (much to my disappointment) I was not there for one of the most unusual oral argument choices of all time. It came in a case back in the 1990s involving a First Amendment challenge to a government program that required the growers of California stonefruit (such as nectarines, peaches, and plums) to help pay for “generic” advertising (along the lines of the “Beef—It’s What’s For Dinner” campaign that was famous in the 1990s). The lawyer representing the growers told Justice Antonin Scalia that the growers wanted to be able to say “that you ought to buy green plums and give them to your wife, and you’re thinking to yourself right now you don’t want to give your wife diarrhea.”
The growers lost, by a vote of 5-4. But Scalia (who countered that he “would never give my wife a green plum”) joined a dissent by Justice David Souter.