Whose Term Was It? A Look Back At The Supreme Court
It would not be an exaggeration to call the recently completed Supreme Court term a lollapalooza. Day-by-day on the last week of the court term, the justices handed down one legal thunderbolt after another: same-sex marriage, voting rights, affirmative action. The end-of-term crush of opinions made so many headlines that other important decisions got little public notice.
If this was the term of equality, the question is whose equality prevailed. In the same-sex marriage cases, the winners were gay and lesbian couples, and the losers were the voters and legislators who had enacted laws that barred recognition of same-sex marriage.
In the voting rights case, the South, which for decades had to clear any voting changes with federal officials, saw itself liberated, while African-American and Latino voters saw the decision as once again allowing historically hostile states to suppress the right to vote for minorities.
And in the affirmative action case, the court's 7-to-1 compromise allowed everyone to claim victory and fight another day.
In terms of leadership and clout on the court, whose term was it? Was the dominant figure, Justice Anthony Kennedy, who voted in the majority in nearly every major case, often writing the majority opinion?
Or was it Chief Justice John Roberts? After all, he engineered more unanimous rulings than usual and wrote the opinion gutting the Voting Rights Act, a law that he had long opposed.
One leadership scenario has Roberts steadily pulling the court to the right, acting strategically to achieve his conservative goals, and knowing that that he will likely serve for another two decades at least.
Another scenario has Justice Stephen Breyer and the liberals making compromises, as in the affirmative action case, to stall off what otherwise would be decisions antithetical to liberal views.
But in either of these scenarios the victory goes to the justice who can amass five votes, and without Kennedy, that is usually very difficult to do.
For many court watchers, like Cornell Law School's Michael Dorf, the same-sex marriage cases this term were the epitome of the court's most important role.
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