WASHINGTON (AP) — ____________________________________________________________________________________________________Mark Sherman has covered the Supreme Court for The Associated Press for 20 years during some of the most momentous decisions in history. He retired on Tuesday, the last day of the court term, and reflects on his experience. He has witnessed how by both happenstance and design the court has moved to the ideological right.____________________________________________________________________________________________________ At the end of my first term covering the Supreme Court, Justice Stephen Breyer departed from his prepared remarks to offer a sharp courtroom rebuke of his conservative colleagues.“It is not often in the law that so few have so quickly changed so much,” Breyer said, dissenting in a school integration case.
The moment was instructive to me as a new reporter on the Supreme Court beat. It encapsulated a term in which a new conservative majority had prevailed in one 5-4 case after another. But more than that, it was a very human reaction from a frustrated justice whose black robe was meant to convey a certain dull sobriety.
I would be on the lookout for such departures for the rest of my 20 years at the court.In that time, almost by happenstance more than design, the court has marched to the ideological right. Unexpected vacancies, brute force political maneuvers and the rise of Donald Trump all combined to give the court a conservative supermajority, and with that change the direction of the country.
