On this week's episode of The Term, host Natalie Rodriguez and guest host Jackie Bell unpack the monumental grant of certiorari and discuss which justices are the most likely targets of advocates when this case is argued next year.
Each week on The Term, Supreme Court reporter Jimmy Hoover and co-host Natalie Rodriguez break down all the high court action.
The high court made national headlines on Monday when it agreed to review the Fifth Circuit's invalidation of Mississippi's ban on most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy — a gestational point two to three months earlier than when a fetus becomes viable — in a case known as Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.
The justices agreed to examine just one question in the case, and even a ruling in Mississippi's favor could perhaps be narrowly written. But there is clear potential for a momentous outcome: The Fifth Circuit found the state's ban implicated the "central holding" of Roe as well as the Supreme Court's 1992 decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey
, which affirmed Roe's central holding and prohibited laws that place an "undue burden" on the right to previability abortions.On this week's episode, Natalie and Jackie break down the specifics of the challenge, how the high court's newly formed conservative majority finally tipped the scales toward taking up the case that had floated through the last 13 conference sessions, and even how its addition to the docket could impact any potential plans of retirement by Justice Stephen Breyer.
The Supreme Court also issued four opinions this week. Natalie and Jackie discuss one of the biggest, a 6-3 vote that held that defendants whose appeals have run out cannot take advantage of last term's ruling that convictions by non-unanimous juries are unconstitutional.
The ruling Monday, authored by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, denied automatic new trials for potentially thousands of prisoners in Louisiana and Oregon convicted under what the justices decided last year were racist schemes, and triggered a sharp dissent from Justice Elena Kagan.
Finally, our guest host Jackie Bell, Law360's senior data editor, ends the show by talking through some numbers from the most recent oral argument season, including how Justice Amy Coney Barrett actually racked up more words per oral argument than any other justice.
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