Source: Washington Monthly
by Garrett Epps
“Every Autumn, Supreme Court analysts provide the public with cogent summaries of the last term and astute prophecies about what will happen after the First Monday in October when the nine justices gather for the new term. I am as pompous as the next pundit, but in 2024, writing that kind of piece would feel wrong. Understanding the last term (if that is possible) is not a matter of extracting doctrine from jurisprudence but of sifting through rubble. Predicting the coming term seems like piecing together the anatomy of a dinosaur from a fossilized tooth and an anklebone. Like the rest of American society, the Supreme Court is caught in currents it can’t predict or control. None of us knows, in the words of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, who will survive and what will be left of them.” (09/25/24)