Noah Feldman

When the Supreme Court voted narrowly to preserve the independence of the Federal Reserve at the end of June, many investors breathed a sigh of relief. It may have been premature. Because on the same day, in another decision, the court killed the independence of every federal agency — including the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The Supreme Court is destroying originalism in order to save it. In Trump v. Cook, Chief Justice John Roberts, a supposed originalist, bypassed the theory in favor of a five-year-old doctrine known as “history and tradition.” That allowed the court to preserve the independence of the Federal Reserve — even as, in a separate decision issued the same day, it invoked originalist principles to end the independence of all other federal agencies.

The good news about the landmark birthright citizenship decision the Supreme Court issued today is that it correctly holds that children born in the US automatically become citizens. That’s the right interpretation of the 14th Amendment and reaffirms the 1898 precedent that the president tried to upend with his executive order purporting to deny citizenship to children of undocumented people.

The independence of the US Federal Reserve rests on a single Supreme Court vote. That is the takeaway of a revolutionary pair of opinions written by Chief Justice John Roberts today.

In a decision that redefines what it means to be heartless, the Supreme Court has held that by stopping asylum seekers from crossing the border, the US can avoid ever having to determine whether their lives are in danger if they return home. The majority opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito, is a case study in the absurdities of legalism, and shows why it has been condemned since the days of Jesus of Nazareth.

In an era when the US routinely flouts international law by arresting or killing foreign leaders, at the direction of the president and with the acquiescence of Congress, the Supreme Court today ruled that the courts should not participate in the project of protecting human rights abroad. Thus is the American government’s abandonment of the cause of international human rights complete.

The Supreme Court’s decision this week to allow Alabama to use a congressional map that the lower courts had twice overturned as racially discriminatory marks an important stage in the evolution of the court as an institution — and of the US as a democracy. The ruling sends all Americans, as voters and citizens, a clear message: When it comes to ensuring fair elections, we’re on our own.

Partisan gerrymandering is dominating the news, and as a scholar of constitutional law and a biographer of James Madison, who founded one of America’s first political parties, I think I know the reason: The whole thing has gone completely nuts.

The Voting Rights Act has been near death since 2013, and today the Supreme Court administered the coup de grâce. In a 6-3 decision written by Justice Samuel Alito, the court’s conservative majority effectively ruled that states are now free to redraw congressional districts so as to eliminate many Black Democratic members of Congress.

Chief Justice John Roberts was the driving force behind the rise of the Supreme Court’s emergency docket as a powerful tool to empower the activist conservative majority — that’s the main takeaway of a cache of memos leaked to the New York Times. Roberts’ immediate motivation was to enforce the major questions doctrine, another tool of conservative activism that he has made his signature contribution to the court’s jurisprudence. In retrospect, the convergence between the emergency docket and th