(NewsNation) — The U.S. Supreme Court is on track to issue its fewest number of rulings in nearly 80 years, prompting seasoned court-watchers to wonder why.
The high number of “blockbuster” cases may contribute to the slow pace, as do the number of emergency cases, including the ruling on the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the abortion pill.
But there are also indications that rulings are being slowed by a fracture in the court’s six-member conservative majority, personified by clashes between the oldest and the youngest justices: Clarence Thomas and Amy Coney Barrett.
Thomas, the court’s hard-core “originalist,” favors approaching cases with the “history and tradition” philosophy. Barrett sharply broke from that approach in a recent ruling where they both agreed that a slogan on a T-shirt could not be trademarked.
“Barrett used unusually blunt terms to skewer Thomas’ history-based rationale for denying the trademark,” University of California-Berkeley law professor Amanda Tyler told Politico. Barrett “described his approach as ‘wrong twice over,’ and she made clear that her gripes went far beyond this case alone.”
But perhaps the darkest cloud over the court is the one that’s more than two years old: the 2022 leak of the decision overruling Roe v. Wade. It was an unprecedented breach of the court’s legendary confidentiality summed up by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: “At the Supreme Court, those who know don’t talk, and those who talk don’t know.”
Shortly after the leak, Thomas called it “like kind of an infidelity. “When you lose that trust, especially in the institution that I’m in, it changes the institution fundamentally. You begin to look over your shoulder,” Thomas told a law conference in Dallas in May of 2022.
The court decided to hear only 61 cases this term and has yet to rule on about 20. According to the respected court watcher SCOTUS blog, decisions are coming at the second-slowest rate since 1946.
Many of those remaining cases are among the most important to come before the court in decades — most notably the question of presidential immunity for actions taken while in office.
Also awaiting rulings: January 6 defendants seeking shorter sentences; whether a federal emergency medical treatment law overrides Idaho’s abortion ban; government’s regulation of social media and the criminalization of homelessness.