Ketanji Brown Jackson sworn in as SCOTUS issues major rulings on climate and immigration

The Supreme Court’s decision to curb the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to broadly regulate carbon emissions from existing power plants is “devastating,” according to former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Carol Browner.

“It is not taking into account that how we make electricity today is very different than when Thomas Edison invented electricity. I think the case, like many of the cases of the last several weeks, calls into question the legitimacy of the majority of the court, their complete failure to ignore the realities of modern life,” she added.

She expressed skepticism that Congress can pass legislation to address climate change.

“One of the reasons you have an EPA is that they can do the tough job of looking at the law, looking at the science and understanding how to get rid of pollution. If they don’t do that, we’re going to be left to go back to Congress. And to be honest, particularly the Senate, has not shown an interest in addressing the realities of climate change. This is a pressing, immediate problem that we need to address,” Browner said.

There are other ways to curb climate change, and the administration will have to carefully study the opinion, Browner said, but “this has certainly made it much, much more difficult without a doubt.”

“I know the agency will do everything they can to continue to address climate change. It is the most pressing environmental public health issue that we’ve ever faced,” she said.  

The Supreme Court curbed the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to broadly regulate carbon emissions from existing power plants, a major defeat for the Biden administration’s attempts to slash emissions to slow the pace of global warming.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the opinion for the conservative majority, with the three liberal justices dissenting.

Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling in West Virginia v. EPA is “a public health disaster” that will hurt Americans’ health, US Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a press release Thursday.

The court’s decision released Thursday limited the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate emissions from existing power plants.

“A failure to regulate power plant emissions will lead to increases in asthma, lung cancer, and other diseases associated with poor air quality, and in many places, those impacts are likely to fall hardest in already heavily polluted neighborhoods,” Becerra said.

Environmental attorneys are digesting the Supreme Court’s ruling on the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority and determining how the agency could act on climate change going forward.

“This may be about as bad as it could be in terms of limiting EPA’s regulatory authorities,” said Richard Revesz, an environmental law expert at NYU’s School of Law. “This case by its nature provides significant constraints EPA’s authority to regulate the power sector — but not other sectors of the economy” like transportation or industrial emissions.

As for what’s next, Revesz said the EPA will be considering what action it can take within the confines of the ruling.

Carbon capture and sequestration is where the carbon is scrubbed out of power plant emissions before it enters the atmosphere. It’s an expensive technology, and scientists have warned that it’s not a silver bullet.

The Clean Power Plan was an Obama-era law that set a goal for each state to limit carbon emissions, while letting those states determine how to meet those goals.

As Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the opinion for the conservative majority, capping carbon dioxide emissions at a level that will force a nationwide transition away from the use of coal may be “sensible,” but “it is not plausible that Congress gave EPA the authority to adopt on its own such a regulatory scheme” under the Clean Air Act.

A White House spokesperson calls the Supreme Court decision on West Virginia v. EPA “another devastating decision from the Court that aims to take our country backwards.”

Read the full statement from the White House official:

Migrants live in tents in Tijuana, Mexico, in April.

The Supreme Court on Thursday gave President Biden the green light to end the controversial “Remain in Mexico” immigration policy that originated under the Trump administration.

Since the beginning of his administration, Biden has tried to wind down the policy, which sends certain non-Mexican citizens who entered the US back to Mexico — instead of detaining them or releasing them into the United States — while their immigration proceedings played out.

The ruling was 5-4, and states that immigration law gives the federal government the discretion to end the program, formally known as Migrant Protection Protocols.

Here’s what you need to know about the Supreme Court’s decision and the immigration policy it is allowing Biden end:

Read more here.

The Supreme Court on Thursday sent three abortion-related cases back down to lower courts to be reconsidered under the justices’ new ruling ending federal protections for the procedure.

The move was not a surprise and reflects the dramatically changed legal landscape around abortion after the new Supreme Court ruling, issued last week in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health. It is expected that the states that had asked the Supreme Court to review court orders blocking their restrictive abortion laws will soon be allowed to carry out those measures.

The court, having decided the term’s big Second Amendment case invalidating a New York law that restricted where people could carry a concealed weapon in public, also sent several cases they had been sitting on back to the lower courts for further deliberations.  

The lower court will look at Justice Clarence Thomas’ opinion in the New York case that changed the way judges should analyze gun laws, to reconsider the disputes they had previously decided.  

Two of the abortion cases being sent to lower courts concerned measures that states had passed prohibiting abortions sought solely because the fetus had been diagnosed with certain genetic abnormalities. After last week’s Dobbs’ ruling, one of the states, Arkansas, enacted an outright ban on abortion. 

In Arizona, the other state seeking to revive a ban on abortions sought because of genetic abnormalities, state Attorney General Mark Brnovich has vowed to revive a 1901 law criminalizing abortion, and some clinics have stopped offering the procedure. 

In the meantime, the Supreme Court said Friday that, in Arizona’s genetic abnormalities case, a court order halting the law had been lifted. 

The third abortion case sent back to lower courts concerned an Indiana parental notification law. Like Arizona, abortion remains legal in Indiana, though the state’s Republican leaders are planning to reconvene the legislature later this summer to consider additional anti-abortion measures. 

Due to lower court rulings citing the now-defunct Supreme Court precedents favoring abortion rights, Indiana has not been able to implement a 2017 law, which requires that minors who have successfully secured permission from a judge to obtain an abortion notify their parents before the abortion is performed. 

Following the Supreme Court’s decision to curb the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to broadly regulate carbon emissions from existing power plant, the agency released a statement reacting to the opinion.

The courts decision represents a major defeat for the Biden administration’s attempts to slash emissions at a moment when scientists are sounding alarms about the accelerating pace of global warming.

The Supreme Court on Thursday gave President Biden the green light to end the controversial “Remain in Mexico” immigration policy that originated under the Trump administration. 

The case now goes back down to a lower court for additional proceedings around Biden’s latest attempt to end the program. A hold on Biden’s bid to end the program remains in place, but Thursday’s ruling suggested that that order should be lifted shortly.  

The Supreme Court said 5-4 that immigration law gives the federal government the discretion to end the program, which sends certain non-Mexican citizens who entered the US back to Mexico – instead of detaining them or releasing them into the United States – while their immigration proceedings played out. 

The Supreme Court’s decision is a major victory for the Biden immigration agenda as the administration has suffered several losses in lower courts in its efforts to reverse Trump’s hardline immigration policies.  

Several of the red states that challenged the termination of Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) have also brought lawsuits challenging other attempts by Biden to pivot away from his predecessor’s aggressive approach and those cases are still working their way through lower courts. 

Roberts was joined by the liberal justices and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, with Kavanaugh also filing a concurring opinion. Justices Samuel Alito and Amy Coney Barrett wrote dissenting opinions joined by the other dissenters. 

With its ruling, the court said that lower courts must now consider whether the government complied with administrative law with the more recent attempt that the Biden administration made – with a memo rolled out in October – to end the Trump-era policy. 

Biden’s bid to terminate the program had been challenged in court by a coalition of red states led by Texas that argued that ending it ran afoul of immigration law. They also argued that administration violated the Administrative Procedure Act — which requires that agencies take certain procedural steps when implementing policy — in how it went about unwinding the program, formally known as Migrant Protection Protocols.    

The lower courts, which refused to consider the October memo, will now examine whether that latest attempt to end the program complied with the Administrative Procedure Act. 

Roberts wrote that the government’s authority to release some migrants on parole, rather than detain them or send them back to Mexico is not “unbounded,” while noting immigration law’s requirement that parole be used “on a case-by-case basis.” 

His opinion also said that the lower court erred in blocking Biden’s termination of the program, citing Thursday a court ruling from earlier this term that said lower court could not grant class-wide orders that barred immigration officials from carrying out certain policies. 

Emissions rise from the Kentucky Utilities Co. Ghent generating station in Ghent, Kentucky, in April 2021.

At the heart of Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling was a question over the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate planet-warming emissions from power plants, which are a huge contributor to the climate crisis.

Around 25% of planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions around the globe and in the US come from generating electricity, according to the EPA. And coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, powers about 20% of US electricity.

Emissions from power production rose last year for the first time since 2014, an increase that was mainly driven by coal use.

The surge in fossil fuel use is worrying not only for Biden’s climate goals – the President in his first months in office pledged to slash US emissions in half by 2030 – but also the planet.

Scientists have become increasingly urgent in their warnings: to make headway on the climate crisis, emissions not only need to be reduced going forward, but the world needs to develop ways to also remove the greenhouse gas that’s been pumped into the atmosphere in decades past.

In a landmark report last year, scientists reported that the planet is warming faster than they had previously imagined it would. As it does, they said, extreme weather will become more deadly; water crises will develop and worsen; food insecurity will grow and disease will spread.

To avoid the worst consequences, the world must limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (it’s already passed 1.1 degrees), and the only way to do that is to keep the vast majority of the Earth’s remaining fossil fuel stores in the ground.

The Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to hear a dispute over redistricting in North Carolina, in a case that could have major implications for voting rights and fundamentally change the landscape of election law.  

Central to the case is the so called “Independent State Legislature” theory — a legal doctrine pushed by former President Donald Trump and his supporters during frantic efforts to call into question 2020 election results. At issue is the power of state courts to reject rules adopted by a state legislature in a dispute over federal elections.  

Critics say, if it is blessed by the Supreme Court, the theory could lead to rogue legislators unchecked by state courts.  

The doctrine relies on the elections clause of the Constitution that vests “state legislatures” with control over the “Times, Places and Manner” of holding elections.  

Under the theory being pushed by some conservatives, the word “legislature” excludes a role for state courts. 

Traditionally, according to Rick Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California’s Irvine School of Law, legislatures have set ground rules for conducting an election, but those rules are also subject to state processes that include a role for election administrators and state courts to interpret the meaning of state election rules.

Some background: The appeal at issue was brought to the high court by Republicans in North Carolina who are challenging congressional maps drawn by state judges that favor democrats.  

The dispute began after North Carolina gained a seat in the House of Representatives, and the North Carolina General Assembly twice adopted new congressional districting maps. On both occasions, however, the state’s Supreme Court rejected the maps and finally ordered that the 2022 election go forward with maps drawn by judges. The court held that the General Assembly’s maps amounted to partisan gerrymanders and violated provisions of the state constitution.  

Lawyers for republican state House Speaker Timothy Moore and state Senate President Pro Tempore Philip Berger asked the Supreme Court to step in to block the lower court ruling on an emergency basis back in March.    

Back then, the court declined to step in over the dissent of Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch. Alito, writing for his colleagues, said that the case presented an “exceptionally important and recurring question of constitutional law.”

Justice Brett Kavanaugh concurred with his conservative colleagues that the court should eventually take up the issue of the role of state courts. But he joined the majority in the case at hand, allowing the maps to be used for upcoming election procedures.  

“This Court has repeatedly ruled that federal courts ordinarily should not alter state election laws in the period close to an election,” Kavanaugh wrote. 

After that defeat on the emergency application, David Thompson of Cooper & Kirk, a lawyer representing the North Carolina Republicans, came back to the court asking the justices to take up the appeal and decide the issue in time to impact future elections.

In court papers, he acknowledged that the 2022 congressional elections in North Carolina will take place under the current maps but said that the court should “intervene now to resolve this critically important and recurring question and ensure that congressional elections in 2024 and thereafter are conducted in a manner consistent with our Constitution’s express design.”   

He argued that the elections clause “creates the power to regulate the times, places and manner of federal elections and then vests that power in the ‘legislature’ of each State.”

“It does not leave the States free to limit the legislature’s constitutionally vested power, or place it elsewhere in the State’s governmental machinery, as a matter of state law,” he said. 

Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling on curbing the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to fight climate change calls into question the future of federal-level climate action in the US, and puts even more pressure on Congress to act to reduce planet-warming emissions.

But broad action from Congress is unlikely. Democrats in Congress have been embroiled in difficult negotiations on a climate and clean energy bill with their main holdout, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia for months, with no clear end in sight.

It’s unclear whether those negotiations on a package of clean energy tax credits and other emissions-cutting programs will yield a result.

And without both major investments on clean energy and strong regulations cutting emissions by the EPA, Biden has very little hope of meeting his climate goal, independent analysis has showed.

In a statement Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Thursday’s Supreme Court decision makes it “all the more imperative that Democrats soon pass meaningful legislation to address the climate crisis.”

Steam billows from a coal-fired power plant in Craig, Colorado, in 2021.

Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the dissenters, sounded the alarm about global warming after the Supreme Court issued a ruling curbing the EPA’s ability to broadly regulate carbon emissions from existing power plants.  

She criticized the majority’s holding that Congress did not authorize the agency to act. “That is just what Congress did when it broadly authorized” the agency to select the best system of emission reduction for power plants, she said. 

“The Clean Power Plan falls within EPA’s wheelhouse, and it fits perfectly,” she said. 

“The Court appoints itself — instead of Congress or the expert agency — the decision-maker on climate policy,” Kagan said. 

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that “our precedent counsels skepticism toward EPA’s claim” that the law “empowers it to devise carbon emissions caps based on a generation shifting approach.” 

Roberts said that capping carbon dioxide emissions at a level that will force a nationwide transition away from the use of coal may be a “sensible” solution to the “crisis of the day.”  

Writing separately, Justice Neil Gorsuch emphasized the court’s move to limit agency power, which he considers unaccountable to the public. 

“While we all agree that administrative agencies have important roles to play in a modern nation, surely none of us wishes to abandon our Republic’s promise that the people and their representatives should have a meaningful say in the laws that govern them,” Gorsuch wrote.

West Virginia Governor Jim Justice celebrated Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling that curbed the EPA’s ability to broadly regulate carbon emissions from existing power plants.

“Instead, members of Congress who have been duly elected to represent the will of the people across all of America will be allowed to have a rightful say when it comes to balancing our desire for a clean environment with our need for energy and the security it provides us,” he added.

Justice noted that his state is one of a few in the nation “where all agency regulations must be approved by a vote of the state legislature before they take effect,” and is happy to see the federal government following a similar model.

“This ruling will have a positive impact on our country for generations to come and I’m proud that West Virginia was the state leading the way in this landmark case,” he said.

West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey called the ruling “a great win” for the state.

“We are pleased this case returned the power to decide one of the major environmental issues of the day to the right place to decide it: the U.S. Congress, comprised of those elected by the people to serve the people,” Morrisey said in a statement. “This is about maintaining the separation of powers, not climate change. Today, the Court made the correct decision to rein in the EPA, an unelected bureaucracy. And we’re not done. My office will continue to fight for the rights of West Virginians when those in Washington try to go too far in asserting broad powers without the people’s support.”

“EPA’s actions would intrude on the states’ traditional authority to regulate their own power grids. Yet no federal law includes such a clear statement allowing that kind of intrusion,” his statement continued.

The Supreme Court on Thursday curbed the EPA’s ability to broadly regulate carbon emissions from existing power plants, a defeat for the Biden administration’s attempts to slash emissions at a moment when scientists are sounding alarms about the accelerating pace of global warming.

In addition, the court cut back the agency’s authority in general, invoking the so-called “major questions” doctrine – a ruling that could impact the authority of all federal agencies to regulate in other areas of policy, as well as regulation of the internet and worker safety.

“Under our precedents, this is a major questions case,” said Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote the majority opinion. “There is little reason to think Congress assigned such decisions to the Agency.”

The decision will send shock waves across other agencies, threatening agency action that comes without clear congressional authorization.

“It would be one thing if Congress could be expected to respond to this ruling by updating all of those delegations to make them more specific, but we – and the Court – know that it won’t, which will almost surely lead to significant deregulation across a wide swath of federal authority,” Vladeck added.

The Supreme Court curbed the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to broadly regulate carbon emissions from existing power plants.

The ruling was 6-3. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the opinion for the conservative majority, with the three liberal justices dissenting. 

Roberts said that “our precedent counsels skepticism toward EPA’s claim” that the law “empowers it to devise carbon emissions caps based on a generation shifting approach.”

Roberts wrote that capping carbon dioxide emissions at a level that will force a nationwide transition away from the use of coal may be a “sensible” solution.

“But it is not plausible that Congress gave EPA the authority to adopt on its own such a regulatory scheme” under the law in question.

“A decision of such magnitude and consequence rests with Congress itself, or an agency acting pursuant to a clear delegation from that representative body,” he wrote.

Activists demonstrate in front of the Supreme Court in April.

The Supreme Court on Thursday gave President Biden the green light to end the controversial “Remain in Mexico” immigration policy that originated under the Trump administration. 

Since the beginning of his administration, Biden has tried to wind down the policy, which sends certain non-Mexican citizens who entered the US back to Mexico — instead of detaining them or releasing them into the United States — while their immigration proceedings played out.

Biden’s bid to terminate the program had been challenged in court by a coalition of red states led by Texas that argued that ending it ran afoul of immigration law. They also argued that administration violated the Administrative Procedure Act — which requires that agencies take certain procedural steps when implementing policy — in how it went about unwinding the program, formally known as Migrant Protection Protocols.

The program, which was first implemented in 2019 under then-President Donald Trump, has been criticized by immigrant-rights advocates, who argue that it’s inhumane and that it exposes asylum seekers with credible claims to dangerous and squalid conditions in Mexico.

Before the Trump administration put the “Remain in Mexico” program in place, no other administration had embraced such an approach toward non-Mexican asylum-seekers that required them to stay in Mexico over the course of their immigration court proceedings in the United States. Biden campaigned on ending the policy and has said it “goes against everything we stand for as a nation of immigrants.”

Biden has grappled with a growing number of border crossings over the course of his administration amid mass migration in the Western hemisphere. Since October, border authorities have encountered migrants more than a million times along the US-Mexico border, though many have been turned away under a separate pandemic-emergency rule. The Department of Homeland Security, though, has maintained that the “Remain in Mexico” policy comes at a steep human cost and is not an effective use of resources.

Read more about the ruling here.

Emissions rise from the smokestacks of a coal-fired power plant in Castle Dale, Utah.

The Supreme Court curbed the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to broadly regulate carbon emissions from existing power plants, a major defeat for the Biden administration’s attempts to slash emissions at a moment when scientists are sounding alarms about the accelerating pace of global warming.

In addition, the court cut back the agency’s authority in general invoking the so-called “major questions” doctrine — a ruling that will impact the federal government’s authority to regulate in other areas of climate policy, as well as regulation of the internet and worker safety. 

The ruling was 6-3. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the opinion for the conservative majority, with the three liberal justices dissenting.

The decision is one of the most consequential cases for climate change and clean air in decades.

Although the Supreme Court issued the two most important opinions of the term last week, upending near 50-year-old precedent on abortion and expanding gun rights for the first time in a decade, this blockbuster term is not over.

Still to be decided are two cases, here’s a look at what remains:

Immigration: Remain in Mexico

The justices are considering whether the Biden administration can terminate a Trump-era border policy known as “Remain in Mexico.” Lower courts have so far blocked Biden from ending the policy.

Under the unprecedented program launched in 2019, the Department of Homeland Security can send certain-non Mexican citizens who entered the United States back to Mexico — instead of detaining them or releasing them into the United States — while their immigration proceedings play out.

Critics call the policy inhumane and say it exposes asylum seekers with credible claims to dangerous and squalid conditions. The case raises questions not only regarding immigration law, but also a president’s control over policy and his diplomatic relationships with neighboring countries.

Climate Change: EPA authority to regulate emissions from power plants

The justices will decide a case concerning the EPA’s authority to regulate carbon emissions from existing power plants, in a dispute that could harm the Biden administration’s attempts to slash emissions. It comes at a moment when scientists are sounding alarms about the accelerating pace of global warming.

The court’s decision to step in and hear the case concerned environmentalists because there is no rule currently in place. A lower court wiped away a Trump-era rule in 2021 and the Biden administration’s EPA is currently working on a new rule.

But the fact that there were enough votes to take up the issue now, struck some as an aggressive grant, signaling the court wants to limit the scope of the EPA’s authority even before a new rule is on the books.

Stephen Breyer sits with his fellow Supreme Court justices for a group photo in 2018.

Justice Stephen Breyer notified the White House on Wednesday that his retirement will be effective Thursday, June 30, at noon ET.

In a letter to President Joe Biden, Breyer said it had been his “great honor” to participate as a judge in the “effort to maintain our Constitution and the Rule of Law.”

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson will take the oaths on Thursday to begin her service as the 116th member of the court. Breyer said Wednesday that Jackson is prepared to “take the prescribed oaths.”

On his last full day as a sitting justice, Breyer attended a private conference session with his colleagues Wednesday. The justices reviewed a list of pending petitions, some tied to cases in which they had recently ruled, some related to new issues.

Following tradition, Breyer will keep an office at the court, though he will move into smaller chambers

The fact that the court will issue final opinions and orders on the same day reflects a more expedited timeline than past terms. It suggests that the justices — who have been subject to death threats since the release of a draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade are eager for the momentous and divisive term to end as soon as possible.

There are two big cases awaiting resolution concerning the environment and immigration.

Jackson, Breyer’s replacement, was confirmed by the Senate in April by a vote of 53-47, with three Republicans joining Democrats to vote in favor. Though her addition to the bench doesn’t change the ideological balance of the court, Jackson will be the first Black woman to serve on the highest court in the nation.

President Joe Biden speaks at a news conference in Madrid on Thursday.

President Biden indicated Thursday that he supports an exception to the 60-vote threshold needed to advance legislation in the Senate to codify abortion and privacy rights following the Supreme Court’s ruling overturning the landmark Roe v. Wade.

Pressed moments later to clarify that he was opening to changing filibuster rules for those issues, Biden said, “Right to privacy, not just abortion rights, but yes, abortion rights.”

Codifying Roe v. Wade requires 60 votes in the Senate, which it does not currently have, unless the filibuster rules are changed to require a simple majority. Key moderate Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona have expressed opposition to changing filibuster rules. Manchin, however, is open to codifying Roe v. Wade legislatively. 

Biden also said he would be meeting with governors Friday to receive their feedback and would have “announcements to make then.”

“The first and foremost thing we should do is make it clear how outrageous this decision was and how much it impacts not just on a woman’s right to choose, which is a critical, critical piece, but on privacy generally, on privacy generally. And so I’m going to be talking to the governors as to what actions they think I should be taking, as well. But the most important thing to be clear about: we have to change, I believe we have to codify Roe v Wade in the law,” he said.

More context: There has been no indication those two senators, Manchin and Sinema, have or will change their positions.

But Biden’s call does dovetail with the White House efforts to ramp up the urgency in advance of the midterm elections – and it comes as national Democrats have increasingly raised concerns that the Biden administration is not doing enough to address – and fight – the Supreme Court decision.

Despite flagging poll numbers and poor prospects in holding onto the Democratic majority in the House, the White House sees a path to gaining Senate seats to increase their narrow majority.

Holding their current seats and adding at least two new Democratic senators could, in theory, create the pathway to securing the votes for a Senate rules change.

President Biden disputed characterizations that America is going backward amid a new low approval rating, inflation, and other domestic issues. Asked how he reconciles those problems to the world leaders he’s met with this week during the NATO summit, Biden pushed back, but conceded the Supreme Court’s ruling on Roe v. Wade was “destabilizing” and called the court’s actions “outrageous behavior.”

Biden continued to lambast the court’s decision.

“We’ve been a leader in the world in terms of personal rights and privacy rights. And it is a mistake, in my view, for the Supreme Court to do what it did,” he said, later calling on Congress to codify the landmark women’s reproductive rights ruling.  

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is set to join the Supreme Court on Thursday, making history as the first female African-American justice and beginning what could be a decades-long tenure.

But as she starts her job, the court is in turmoil.

The country is reeling from the aftereffects of the most consequential term in decades, where the majority upended a half century of law on abortion by reversing Roe v. Wade and expanded gun rights for the first time in more than a decade.  

The justices work to maintain civility in public, but this term’s opinions revealed an underbelly of rage. Not only were the justices attacking the reasoning of their opponents in the case at hand, but they renewed grievances aired in previous opinions. 

Things will not calm down anytime soon. New challenges related to women’s reproductive health, the Second Amendment and even same-sex marriage are likely to swirl in state and federal courts across the country. Related disputes will make their way back to the high court in some form, greeting the nine justices who are irretrievably divided on many social issues.

After her confirmation, in a stirring speech in the South Lawn in April, Jackson noted that in her family “it took just one generation to go from segregation to the Supreme Court of the United States.” 

Those who know Jackson say her time serving on the lower courts has prepared her for the high court and a divided multi-member body. They believe her fractious confirmation hearings where Republicans accused her of being soft on child porn crimes opened her eyes to the depth of division in the country at a fraught moment in history.  

Read more here.

President Joe Biden talks with Ketanji Brown Jackson as they watch the Senate vote on her confirmation in April.

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson will be sworn in as an associate justice Thursday following the retirement of Justice Stephen Breyer. The Supreme Court is expected to hold onto its right-wing tilt, even with the addition of a liberal justice.

Here are some things to remember about her confirmation process:

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer announces his retirement at the White House in January.

Justice Stephen Breyer, who was appointed to the court in 1994 by then-President Bill Clinton, announced his retirement plans in January. The highly anticipated decision was met with a collective sigh of relief by Democrats, who feared the possibility of losing the seat to a future Republican president should the 83-year-old jurist ignore an intense pressure campaign from the left, which urged him to leave the court while Biden had a clear path to replace him.

A consistent liberal vote on the Supreme Court with an unflappable belief in the US system of government and a pragmatic view of the law, Breyer has sought to focus the law on how it could work for the average citizen. He was no firebrand and was quick to say that the Supreme Court couldn’t solve all of society’s problems. He often stressed that the court shouldn’t be seen as part of the political branches but recognized that certain opinions could be unpopular.

In his later years on the court, he was best known for a dissent he wrote in 2015 in a case concerning execution by lethal injection. He took the opportunity to write separately and suggest to the court that it take up the constitutionality of the death penalty.

In the opinion, Breyer wrote that after spending many years on the court reviewing countless death penalty cases, he had come to question whether innocent people had been executed. He also feared that the penalty was being applied arbitrarily across the country. He noted that, in some cases, death row inmates could spend years — sometimes in solitary confinement — waiting for their executions.

Ketanji Brown Jackson testifies during her confirmation hearing in March.

Ketanji Brown Jackson is entering the US Supreme Court at the end of a historic session — which included the court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. She will be sworn in today, following the retirement of Justice Steven Breyer.

During her confirmation hearings a few months ago, Jackson gave new details about the way she approaches her job and the “methodology” she uses for deciding a case.

“I am acutely aware that as a judge in our system I have limited power and I am trying in every case to stay in my lane,” she said.

The three-step process she described involved clearing her mind of any preconceived notions about the case, receiving the various inputs — the written briefs, the factual record, the hearings — she’ll need to decide a case, and embarking on an interpretation of the law that hews to “the constraints” on her role as a judge.

She said she was trying to “to figure out what the words mean as they were intended by the people who wrote them.”

This description of her methodology was not enough to satisfy Republican questions about her judicial philosophy.

But what does this term mean? It refers to the type of framework a judge uses to analyze a case of constitutional interpretation. An originalist approach, which is favored by conservatives, seeks to interpret the Constitution by how the framers would have understood the words at the time they were drafted.

Some progressives have sought to chart what has been called a “Living Constitution” approach, which seeks to interpret the general principles in the Constitution in a way that is applicable to contemporary circumstances.

Even as she answered Nebraska Republican Sen. Ben Sasse’s questions about the dueling approaches, Jackson declined to explicitly align herself with one or the other, noting that constitutional interpretation did not come up every often in the cases she was deciding as a lower court judge.

Ketanji Brown Jackson will join the Supreme Court later on Thursday.

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson will be sworn in today at noon at the Supreme Court.

She will receive the required two oaths.

First, Chief Justice John Roberts will administer the Constitutional Oath, and then Justice Stephen Breyer will administer the second, Judicial Oath, in a ceremony in the West Conference Room before a small gathering of Jackson’s family.

The ceremony will be livestreamed on the court’s website. A more formal ceremony will take place at a later date.