Our colleague Stuart Gerson of Epstein Becker Green has a new post on SCOTUS Today that will be of interest to our readers: "Court Grants Certiorari in Abortion Case, Issues Several Decisions, and Continues to Demonstrate an Essential Commitment to Textualism".
The following is an excerpt:
The most widely reported action that the Supreme Court took this past Monday is its grant of cert. to review an en banc decision of the Fifth Circuit that, if reversed, would substantially undercut Roe v. Wade. That case won’t be argued until next fall and, for now, the readers of this blog will be more immediately interested in the actual decisions that were rendered by the Court yesterday. One of them, involving criminal verdicts delivered by non-unanimous juries, is the product of a strong philosophical division between the Court’s six conservatives (themselves having varied views) and its three liberals. However, two were unanimous decisions. What explains this is a point that I have been making repeatedly over the last several terms. While especially in procedural cases, and while there is not always unanimity in the outcome, there is an essential commitment across the Court to textualism and a recognition that it is Congress that makes federal law while the Court interprets the outcomes of that law in terms of what the Congress did, rather than what various Justices might prefer. This thesis isn’t always true, but I suggest that it is true enough. Indeed, it is at the core of the frequent agreement between the Chief Justice and Justice Kagan, whom I believe to be the most important of the liberal Justices. But, my general opinion aside, let’s turn to three cases actually decided.
Click here to read the full post and more on SCOTUS Today.
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