Supreme Court Review

In the Cato Supreme Court Review, leading legal scholars analyze the most important cases of the Supreme Court’s most recent term. The Review is published annually on Constitution Day, in tandem with a major symposium. It is the first scholarly review to appear after the term’s end and the only one to critique the court from a Madisonian perspective.

“Cato, with its emphasis on limited government and individual rights, has weighed in with a book of essays by academics and practicing lawyers that manages to skewer liberal and conservative justices alike.”
—Tony Mauro, Supreme Court correspondent, The National Law Journal and Legal Times

23 results found

Supreme Court Review

2023-2024
In all three of Loper Bright, Jarkesy, and NetChoice, the Supreme Court took just about the most libertarian position it could have. The result is less concentrated power, more procedural safeguards for the accused, and more rights for those in the business of publishing others’ speech. While there is plenty to make libertarians pessimistic in the world, this Term showed once again that the Supreme Court is often (though certainly not always) a major bright spot.
Supreme Court Review

2022-2023
This Term, there were only five cases in which the Court split 6–3 along ideological lines, a drop from 14 such cases last term. But some of the biggest cases of the term were among those 6–3 splits, including cases on affirmative action, student-debt forgiveness, and public accommodations and the First Amendment. So while the ideologically split cases may get the most attention, the Court is not a legislature and the Justices don’t just vote along party lines. Within these pages, you’ll read about many cases with all sorts of unexpected lineups, cases that prove litigants and advocates can’t take anything for granted with this Court.
Supreme Court Review

2021-2022
Guns, abortion, climate change—it was a perfect nightmare for some. Four years of President Donald Trump and three controversial nominations to the Court had produced what many feared: a real-life Handmaid’s Tale where women are incubators protected by brandished assault weapons while slowly melting from out-of-control climate change.
Supreme Court Review

2020-2021
All in all, the justices continue to demonstrate that they are judges who decide cases on judicial rather than political grounds. Nevertheless, many Americans believe that the Court is a pure political institution, not too different from our dysfunctional Congress. Yet, fundamentally, the justices are trying their best to expound on a constitution—the Constitution—a fact which is increasingly forgotten by American citizens.
Supreme Court Review

2019-2020
Some long-percolating issues returned (executive power over immigration, Obamacare’s contraceptive mandate), and some new ground was forged on questions of presidential power and the administrative state. We saw a strange abortion ruling in which the chief justice did perhaps the most John Roberts thing ever and went against his own dissent from a four-year-old ruling because he felt bound by that precedent. And we saw a major ruling that extended Title VII protections against sex discrimination to cover sexual orientation and gender identity.
By Trevor Burrus
Supreme Court Review

2018-2019
This term confounded those who believe that all the Court does is decide cases 5-4 along partisan lines. There were 20 5-4 decisions (out of 66 total rulings after argument), but only seven featured the Republican appointees vs. the Democrat appointees. Still, only 39 percent of decisions were unanimous, which is the same as last term and tied for the lowest rate of unanimous decisions since October Term 2008. There are deep ideological divisions in this Court, but those divisions are as much within partisan “blocs” as they are between them.
Supreme Court Review

2017-2018
This was the first full term with the Court back at its “full strength” of nine justices after Justice Antonin Scalia’s death, so all eyes were on Justice Gorsuch to see how he would fit in—and how the Court’s internal dynamic and voting patterns would shift. While early reports, based on what turns out to be unsubstantiated speculation, spoke of tensions between the newest justice and several of his colleagues, he quickly settled in and ended up writing many thoughtful opinions, including casting a handful of deciding votes and being assigned to write for the majority in several important cases.
By Ilya Shapiro
Supreme Court Review

2016-2017
This was a term for legal nerds rather than political junkies, with plenty of interesting cases but not really any front-page news. (A transgender-bathroom-access case, Gloucester County v. G.G., would’ve gotten plenty of attention, but it was ultimately remanded for reconsideration after the Trump administration rescinded the Obama-era guidance to which the lower court had simply deferred.) We had gotten used to the idea that every year the Supreme Court decides several of the biggest national political issues—we’ve seen six or seven consecutive “terms of the century”—but this year saw a regression to the mean.
By Ilya Shapiro
Supreme Court Review

2015-2016
It was an odd and sad year at the Supreme Court. Most years, pundits strain to concoct some sort of “theme” to the judicial year gone by. They try to connect disparate cases into a coherent narrative about, for example, the “triumph of minimalism,” “the court’s turn to the left,” or even its “libertarian moment” (guilty as charged on that one). Such trendspotting is mainly an artificial exercise driven by docket vagaries; it’s not like the justices suddenly decide to make ideological shifts, alter jurisprudential approaches, or grant certiorari based on a “theme of the term.” But this term there actually was a phenomenon that overshadowed the Court’s work and put a metaphorical black ribbon on the proceedings: the passing of Justice Antonin Scalia.
By Ilya Shapiro
Supreme Court Review

2014-2015
By Ilya Shapiro
Supreme Court Review

2013-2014
By Ilya Shapiro
Supreme Court Review

2012-2013
By Ilya Shapiro
Supreme Court Review

2011-2012
By Ilya Shapiro
Supreme Court Review

2010-2011
By Ilya Shapiro
Supreme Court Review

2009-2010
By Ilya Shapiro