As new term begins, Supreme Court poised to resume rightward push


Chief Justice Roberts, whose middle-of-the-road approach to the abortion ruling did not draw a single colleague’s vote, said the court’s role in the constitutional structure must be respected.

“If the court doesn’t retain its legitimate function of interpreting the Constitution, I don’t know who would take on that role,” he said. “You don’t want the political branches telling you what the law is, and you don’t want public opinion to be the guide to the proper decision.”

David A. Strauss, a law professor at the University of Chicago, said the failure of the chief justice’s efforts to broker a compromise in the abortion case presented him with an opportunity.

‘The reaction to Dobbs would give the Chief Justice a chance to tell his Tory colleagues ‘I told you so’ – when you go too far, too fast, people will see the court as nothing more than the judicial wing of the Conservative political movement,” Prof Strauss said. “But I doubt his colleagues are listening.”

Judge Elena Kagan, who is on the court’s three-member liberal wing, has spoken frequently over the summer, albeit in general terms, about ways courts can undermine their own authority.

It could happen, she said in New York in September, when it appears judges are “an extension of the political process or when they impose their own personal preferences”, adding that the public has the right to expect “that changes in personnel, do not send the whole legal system to the trap.

Judge Sonia Sotomayor, another liberal, echoed this point.

The court has near total power to decide which cases it will hear, and it often uses this discretion to resolve disputes between lower courts. The court has agreed to hear many of the major cases in the coming term despite the absence of such disputes, an indication that the new majority is pursuing an agenda and setting the pace for change.