There is much to be relieved about in the US Supreme Court term that ended this week. Chief Justice John Roberts marshalled a shifting coalition of justices to block President Donald Trump’s most outrageous power grabs. These included his abuse of emergency tariff powers, blatant rewriting of citizenship requirements and shocking effort to fire US Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook.
America’s top court has made clear that Trump cannot single-handedly rewrite laws or the Constitution to fit his pro-tariff and anti-immigrant agenda. It has also shored up the independence of the world’s most important central bank. But the votes were worryingly close — 5-4 on Cook and on the constitutional basis of birthright citizenship, and 6-3 on tariffs — and the three liberals are the only consistent votes against overweening presidential power.
The six Republican appointees continue to push the US right’s decades-long project to reshape the government by hobbling the administrative state and concentrating power in the executive. Their willingness to jettison generations of case law and to undo key parts of the New Deal and the Civil Rights movement is less conservative than reactionary.