The Supreme Court’s End-of-Term Sprint
Birthright citizenship, voting rights, and presidential power are all still on the table
It’s mid-June, and that means all eyes are on the US Supreme Court. We’re entering the busiest and often most consequential weeks of the year, when the Court hands down all the decisions it’s been holding back this term — and there are some major ones looming. From birthright citizenship to presidential power, election laws, and firing federal officials, the decisions made this month will likely shape politics for years to come.
To help make sense of what’s coming, I spoke with constitutional law professor Leah Litman — co-host of the Strict Scrutiny podcast and author of Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes. We talked about the biggest remaining cases of the term, how the justices are likely to rule, and more, including:
why the justices always seem to leave the biggest cases for the last minute;
who’s likely to write the opinion in the birthright citizenship case;
whether the Court’s decisionmaking is actually running on legal reasoning or just vibes;
what it might mean if the president can fire any independent agency head; and
what birthday cards can tell us about mail-in voting.
Listen to the conversation now, and let us know what decisions you’re watching for in the comments.
