There were no campaign rallies. No yard signs. No television ads. No candidates knocking on doors asking for your vote.
Yet over the next nine months, those nine people may make decisions affecting immigration, gun ownership, climate policy, voting rules, religious liberty and the reach of government itself.
Welcome to another Supreme Court term.
And if you think this is simply a collection of obscure legal disputes being argued by lawyers in expensive suits, you haven’t been paying attention.
Because underneath almost every major case this term is essentially the same question:
Who gets to decide?
Congress?
The President?
The states?
Federal agencies?
Local governments?
Or judges?
That question has fascinated me for years, particularly as I have watched our federal courts become increasingly entangled in political disputes that once would have been settled through elections and legislatures.
And this term may provide one of the clearest tests yet of where those boundaries actually lie.
The Court opened its new term Monday with Suncor Energy v. Boulder County, a case arising from efforts by Boulder, Colorado, to hold ExxonMobil and Suncor financially responsible under state law for alleged climate-related harms. The energy companies argue that questions involving global greenhouse-gas emissions cannot effectively be regulated through a patchwork of state-court lawsuits. (Constitution Center)
Forget for a moment whether you love Exxon, hate Exxon or couldn’t find Suncor on a map.
The larger question matters.
Can individual cities and states effectively establish national environmental policy through litigation?
That’s not really a climate-change question.
It’s a federalism question.
And those questions are everywhere this term.
The Court will consider challenges to bans on AR-15-style semiautomatic rifles in Illinois and Connecticut. Roughly a dozen states prohibit weapons categorized under their laws as assault weapons. Gun-rights advocates argue that commonly owned semiautomatic rifles are protected by the Second Amendment; states defend the restrictions as legitimate public-safety measures. (AP News)
That one ought to get New Yorkers’ attention.
The Court’s 2022 Bruen decision began with a New York gun law and dramatically reshaped Second Amendment jurisprudence by requiring gun restrictions to be evaluated against the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.
Now the Court returns to the battlefield.
Then there is immigration.
The justices have agreed to hear significant challenges involving the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement policies, including detention of certain immigrants without bond hearings and deportations to third countries—countries where the person being deported may have no citizenship or previous connection. (AP News)
This is where political slogans become considerably less useful.
I believe a country has every right—and obligation—to enforce its borders and immigration laws.
But believing in immigration enforcement doesn’t require surrendering due process.
Those principles are not mutually exclusive.
A government powerful enough to ignore legal protections when dealing with someone you don’t particularly like is eventually powerful enough to ignore them when dealing with someone you do.
Conservatives, of all people, should understand that.
Religious liberty is also back before the Court.
In St. Mary Catholic Parish v. Roy, a Catholic preschool in Colorado argues that it was improperly excluded from the state’s universal preschool program because of religious policies concerning admissions and sexuality. Colorado says participation in the publicly funded program requires compliance with nondiscrimination requirements. (The Washington Post)
Again:
Who gets to decide?
Can government offer a generally available public benefit and then exclude a religious institution because the institution actually behaves according to its religion?
Or does accepting taxpayer money permit the government to impose conditions that otherwise would interfere with religious practice?
Those aren’t academic questions.
They reach Catholic schools, Jewish schools, Christian charities, adoption organizations and religious nonprofits throughout this country.
And then there are elections.
The Court will consider Arizona voting provisions involving proof of citizenship and voter-roll requirements, putting another politically explosive question before the justices as Americans head toward the 2026 midterms. (AP News)
Republicans will talk about election integrity.
Democrats will talk about voter suppression.
Both sides will immediately announce that democracy itself is hanging in the balance.
Apparently democracy spends a remarkable amount of time hanging in the balance these days.
But beneath the political theater lies a legitimate constitutional argument about how far states may go in establishing qualifications and procedures intended to ensure that only eligible citizens participate in elections.
And there will almost certainly be more.
The docket remains unfinished. Additional disputes involving presidential authority and other controversial policies could still reach the Court. (The Washington Post)
Which brings me to something increasingly uncomfortable.
Americans have developed a strange relationship with the Supreme Court.
When the Court gives us the result we want, we suddenly become constitutional scholars.
When it doesn’t, the justices become corrupt political operatives in robes.
Conservatives did it when liberal courts expanded constitutional rights they believed weren’t actually contained in the Constitution.
Liberals do it today when the Roberts Court overturns precedents they considered settled.
I have my own serious concerns about the federal judiciary. Regular readers know that.
Lifetime appointments should not mean lifetime immunity from scrutiny.
Judicial independence is essential.
Judicial accountability is too.
Those ideas can coexist.
But there is another danger here that gets considerably less attention.
We increasingly ask courts to settle disputes that the political branches are afraid—or incapable—of resolving themselves.
Congress doesn’t act.
Presidents stretch executive authority.
Federal agencies discover powers nobody previously knew they possessed.
States push constitutional boundaries.
Advocacy organizations sue.
And eventually everyone arrives at One First Street demanding that nine unelected judges tell 340 million Americans what the rules are.
Then we complain that the Supreme Court has too much power.
Perhaps.
But sometimes we hand it to them.
That may ultimately be the real story of the Supreme Court’s 2026–27 term.
Yes, there will be decisions about guns.
Immigration.
Religion.
Voting.
Climate litigation.
Presidential authority.
And probably several controversies we haven’t even seen coming yet.
But behind virtually all of them is a much older argument about the American experiment.
Government has power.
But government has limits.
Presidents have power.
But presidents have limits.
States have power.
But states have limits.
And yes, judges have power.
They damn well ought to have limits too.
The Constitution was never designed to guarantee that our side wins.
It was designed to establish rules governing what happens when our side doesn’t.
That’s considerably harder.
It is also considerably more important.
So I’ll be watching the Supreme Court closely this term—not because I expect nine people in Washington to save the Republic.
Frankly, I become nervous whenever anyone expects nine people in Washington to save anything.
I’ll be watching because the most important question before this Court may not be whether conservatives or liberals win.
It may be whether, somewhere beneath all the politics, we can still remember the difference between power and authority.
Power is the ability to do something.
Authority is the constitutional right to do it.
And in a republic, that distinction is pretty much everything.
To comfort the afflicted…and afflict the comfortable.
A Valley Viewpoint Narrative
