Week Four: The New Term
Our seventh series is focusing on some of the US Supreme Court’s most important past civil liberties cases. This past Monday, the Court opened its new term, one that many observers think may become its most important in years and especially so for civil liberties. In response, this week we’ll take a break from historical cases to focus on some upcoming ones.
For insight into the Court’s new term, we listened to the Tuesday, October 5 edition of The Daily from the New York Times. Tuesday featured the paper’s Supreme Court correspondent Adam Liptak talking about two upcoming cases and the big question hanging over the Court. The first case is Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a Mississippi case that might provide the Court with a means of reversing Roe v. Wade should its new conservative majority be inclined to do so. The second is New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, a 2nd Amendment case challenging a New York law that imposes strict limits on carrying guns outside the home. The question looming over the Court is its credibility considering the politically charged cases that the justices have chosen to hear this fall and the results of a new Gallup Poll indicating that just 40% of Americans approve of the job that the Supreme Court is doing, the Court’s lowest approval rating since Gallup began asking the question in 2000 and a 9-point drop since July 2021.
To learn more, play the audio file at the link below which runs a little less than 26 minutes.