I agree with this comment left on this article: “I agree in part and disagree in part. For the Roberts’ court, it was a busy year with all Democrat shenanigans that were handled on the emergency docket. But there were so many other cases that deserved a quick GVR or brief per curium ruling without a hearing but instead were denied cert. Especially with today’s denial of the Adamiak case. Despite looking forward to an AWB/magazine ban case next year, it will likely be so narrow as to be near useless and we won’t get the decision until the justices have one foot in the airport cab in June 2027. Justice delayed while $10s of millions are wasted reclaiming a right that should have been clearly and broadly adjudicated years ago.”
I’m often asked why the Supreme Court didn’t take an AR-15 or “large-capacity” magazine case this term. The implication is usually that the Court is dodging the Second Amendment. But there is another, more basic explanation: the Justices have one of the most packed, precedent-setting dockets in living memory, and Chief Justice John Roberts decided to ration the Court’s political capital for now.
To be the smartest person in the room on this, you have to start with the institutional reality. The Supreme Court hears roughly 60 to 70 cases per term on the merits docket. Every granted case demands briefing, oral argument, conference deliberation, opinion drafting, concurrences, and dissents, and the Justices have themselves and a small group of clerks. Behind the merits docket sit thousands of cert petitions a year, each one screened and assessed. And on top of all that is the emergency docket (sometimes called the “shadow docket”), which consists of urgent applications like the one Virginia just filed and lost trying to engage in mid-decade redistricting. Those applications get no oral argument but still consume enormous attention.
Let’s look at what is on the merits docket this term. The Court is deciding birthright citizenship — whether children of illegal aliens and tourist visa holders are automatically American citizens under the Fourteenth Amendment. It’s deciding Mullin v. Al Otro Lado, the Remain in Mexico fight, as well as Mullin v. Doe, the case over President Trump’s authority to revoke the Temporary Protected Status that Biden handed to Haitian nationals. It has already decided Learning Resources v. Trump, addressing the President’s authority concerning tariff policy — a loss for the administration, but a separation-of-powers ruling that will be read by scholars and students for decades to come.
By Mark W. Smith
