So much happened! Let’s take a moment to reflect.
The post What Was The Worst Supreme Court Decision Of 2024? appeared first on Above the Law.
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There were some very surprising legal outcomes last year: Young Thug walking away from a RICO charge with probation, they continued the functional impeachment of Pauline Newman, and people kept on using ChatGPT to do their lawyering despite the obviously clear fault in its stars. But what was the worst legal outcome from the Supreme Court? Pulling inspiration from Austin Sarat’s write-up, let’s go through some of the worst decisions the Supreme Court handed down this year.
- 1. We have to pretend that Justice Kavanaugh knows more about the effects of alcohol consumption than experts who do chemistry for a living.
Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo is a long case name, but fret not: it can be usefully abbreviated as Chevron is Dead. The underlying reasoning was that judges are not only better suited to interpret statutes than field specialists, but the Constitution requires it. This idea that judges know best might make sense in theory, it isn’t the case in practice. It didn’t take very long for one of the brightest minds on the court to crack everyone up when he repeatedly confused Nitrogen Oxide (dangerous ozone pollutant) with Laughing Gas (the teehee spray the dentist uses to make your root canals a lot more pleasant). Expect a rise in food-borne illness and rat poison in your frankfurters. As written, the opinion leaves enough wiggle room for some of the protections gained from decades of Chevron deference to stay in place, but don’t expect them to last if the issue comes before the Court again.
- 2. There’s nothing cruel about arresting people for sleeping outside when they can’t do elsewise.
We used to be a reasonable country: you could have an ordinance preventing loitering or panhandling, but if a homeless person was found sleeping on the sidewalk and had nowhere else to go, you had to check and see if there were any empty beds at the shelter before you policed them for being unconscious in public. What else could you do without being cruel? 2024 answered: You don’t have to worry about that! City of Grants Pass v. Johnson rewrote common sensibilities and announced that there’s nothing cruel about punishing a person with nowhere to go for not going somewhere else.
- 3. That whole Watergate debacle? Totally above board!
Trump v. United States granted Presidents broad protection against prosecution for actions that are official acts of office. Does that include sending the military to assassinate political opponents? Hell, maybe!
This is a fearsome power to hold, especially when it’s in the hands of a person who campaigned on arresting his political opposition and bragged about how he could shoot someone in broad day light years before this opinion was handed down. Four more years of greatness.
These are all bad outcomes, but Grants Pass holds a special, morally objectionable place in my heart. I won’t pretend to play anthropologist, but there’s a story attributed to Margeret Mead — likely incorrectly — that a healed femur was the earliest sign of civilization. Veracity aside, I genuinely believe that you can learn a lot about a person and a people by how they care for their worst off. In other words, safety nets are a sign of a civilization’s strength, and Grants Pass is just about the strongest refutation of “give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore” we’ve seen from the Supreme Court.
The Year’s Worst Legal Decision: 2024 Edition [Verdict]
Earlier: People Are Scrambling To Understand Presidential Immunity, So Many Of The Opinions Are Cracked
Is This The Roberts Court Or The Clarence Court?
Struggling With The Status Versus Conduct Distinction? So Are The Supreme Court Justices
SCOTUS Just Greenlit The Crime Of ‘Sleeping While Homeless’ As Totally Fair Game
John Roberts Says Judges Should Decide How Much Rat Poison Is Too Much For Your Hot Dogs
Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s. He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at [email protected] and by tweet at @WritesForRent.
