Supreme Court Update 2021: Conservative Super-Majority

Did the Supreme Court shift rightward? Did replacing Ruth Bader Ginsburg with Amy Coney Barrett make much of a difference? Were the “liberal” justices routinely relegated to issuing dissents? Did “conservative” justices sometimes join the liberals? Well, yes and yes and yes and yes. This past term was chock full of highly charged issues. The court rendered rulings involving church and state, search and seizure, the death penalty, voting rights, LGBTQ rights, immigrant rights, Obamacare, labor unions and other issues having clear ideologically opposing positions. Not surprisingly, the court’s decisional output generated abundant commentary. Also, not surprisingly, the commentary was varied, if not downright contradictory.