The Supreme Court capped its term Tuesday with one decision overturning a long-standing campaign finance limit and another turning aside President Donald Trump’s attempt to unilaterally change birthright citizenship — a day, experts said, that exemplified this year at the court.
Throughout the term, they said the conservative-controlled court continued to tinker away at long-standing projects to shift American law to the right, while fending off some of Trump’s most expansive claims to executive power.
Across 60 cases, the justices considered gun rights, election rules, immigration challenges, birthright citizenship, executive power, tariffs and more.
David Cole, a professor at Georgetown Law and former legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said this term conservatives on the court enacted major changes to American law, including reducing the sweep of the Voting Rights Act and giving presidents more power to fire federal officials — decisions that tied into long-term efforts in the conservative legal movement.
“This term suggests that much to Donald Trump’s dismay this is not Donald Trump’s court,” Cole said. “It is, however, an extremely conservative court and one that is willing to overrule or rewrite precedent that it disagrees with.”
