Over the past several terms, the Supreme Court has rewritten some of the most consequential rules in American law. The major Supreme Court rulings of this stretch eliminated the constitutional right to abortion, replaced the test for gun regulations with one grounded in history, granted former presidents broad immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts, ended forty years of judicial deference to federal agencies, and reset the framework for Establishment Clause and compelled-speech claims. The through-line is method: the current majority decides constitutional questions by looking to text, history, and tradition rather than balancing modern interests.
Abortion Is No Longer a Constitutional Right
In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022), the Court overturned Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, holding that the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion and returning the question to state legislatures.1Supreme Court of the United States. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization The practical result is that abortion access now depends entirely on where you live.
The reasoning matters almost as much as the outcome. The majority held that any unenumerated right claimed under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause must be “deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and tradition.” Finding no such historical support for abortion access, the Court stripped it of constitutional protection. That test raises the bar for anyone defending a privacy-based right not spelled out in the Constitution, because the challenger now has to produce historical evidence that the right existed at or near 1868, when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified. The Dobbs majority said it was deciding only the abortion question, but the framework it adopted now governs substantive due process generally.
The Second Amendment Runs on History
In New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen (2022), the Court struck down New York’s requirement that applicants for a concealed carry license show a “special need” for self-protection. The ruling held that when the Second Amendment’s text covers someone’s conduct, the Constitution protects that conduct unless the government can show the restriction is consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.2Supreme Court of the United States. New York State Rifle and Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen That replaced the balancing test many lower courts had used, where judges weighed public safety against the individual right to bear arms.
Lower courts struggled to apply pure historical analysis to modern weapons laws, and the Court clarified the standard two years later in United States v. Rahimi (2024). Rahimi upheld a federal law that bars individuals subject to domestic violence restraining orders from possessing firearms. The majority wrote that a challenged regulation “must comport with the principles underlying the Second Amendment, but it need not be a ‘dead ringer’ or a ‘historical twin.'”3Supreme Court of the United States. United States v. Rahimi Courts should ask whether a modern restriction is “relevantly similar” to regulations the founding generation accepted, not whether an identical law existed in 1791.
Rahimi walked back some of the rigidity in Bruen and confirmed that the Second Amendment permits temporary disarmament of someone a court has found to pose a credible threat to another person’s physical safety. Courts now operate with more flexibility, though history and tradition remain the governing test for every firearms regulation.
Presidents Have Broad Immunity From Criminal Prosecution
For the first time, in Trump v. United States (2024), the Court addressed whether a former president can face criminal charges for conduct while in office. The majority built a three-tier framework: absolute immunity for actions within core constitutional powers, at least presumptive immunity for other official acts, and no immunity for unofficial acts.4Supreme Court of the United States. Trump v. United States
Core powers include pardoning federal offenders, removing senior executive branch officials, and recognizing foreign governments. When a president exercises these, criminal prosecution is categorically barred. For other official acts outside that core, prosecutors can potentially overcome the presumptive immunity by showing that bringing charges would not intrude on the authority and functions of the presidency. Private conduct gets no protection at all.
The dissenters argued the ruling places presidents above the law for a wide range of official conduct. The majority countered that criminal exposure for official actions would chill bold decision-making and upset the separation of powers. The underlying case went back to the trial court to sort out which allegations involved official versus unofficial conduct, a line-drawing exercise that will shape how the doctrine actually operates.
Federal Agencies Have Lost Significant Power
Three decisions in close succession reshaped how regulations are made, defended, and enforced.
Chevron Deference Is Gone
For forty years, under Chevron U.S.A. v. Natural Resources Defense Council (1984), courts had to accept an agency’s reasonable interpretation of an ambiguous statute it administered. In Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (2024), the Court overruled Chevron, holding that the Administrative Procedure Act requires judges to exercise their own independent judgment on whether an agency has stayed within its legal authority.5Supreme Court of the United States. Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo
Agencies no longer get the benefit of the doubt when their reading of a statute is contested. Judges decide for themselves what the law means, even on technical questions involving environmental science, financial regulation, or public health. Regulated industries now have a stronger hand when challenging agency rules, and agencies face a higher bar when defending new ones. A narrower form of deference survives, sometimes called Skidmore respect, under which an agency’s interpretation can carry persuasive weight based on the thoroughness of its reasoning, its consistency over time, and its expertise. That is persuasive authority, not the mandatory deference Chevron once required.
Big Rules Need Clear Congressional Authority
In West Virginia v. EPA (2022), the Court formally applied the major questions doctrine. When an agency claims authority to make decisions of vast economic and political significance, it must point to clear congressional authorization for that specific power.6Supreme Court of the United States. West Virginia v. EPA The Court found the EPA lacked such authorization when it tried to restructure the nation’s energy production methods through the Clean Power Plan. Congress had never given the agency an explicit green light for a transformation of that scale.
Combined with Loper Bright, this doctrine forces Congress to write laws more precisely. Agencies can no longer stretch vague statutory language to address problems lawmakers did not specifically contemplate.
Agency Fraud Penalties Require a Jury
In SEC v. Jarkesy (2024), the Court held that when the SEC seeks civil penalties for securities fraud, the defendant has a Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial in federal court. Congress cannot sidestep that right by routing traditional legal claims through an agency’s own administrative tribunal.7Supreme Court of the United States. SEC v. Jarkesy What matters is the substance of the claim, not who brings it or where it is filed. The ruling reaches beyond the SEC to any federal agency that imposes monetary penalties through in-house proceedings.
Religion and Compelled Speech
In Kennedy v. Bremerton School District (2022), the Court abandoned the Lemon test, which since 1971 had been the primary framework for evaluating whether government action violated the Establishment Clause. The old test asked whether a law had a secular purpose, whether its primary effect advanced or inhibited religion, and whether it fostered excessive government entanglement with religion. The Court replaced it with an approach rooted in “historical practices and understandings,” examining how the founding generation understood the relationship between government and religion.8Supreme Court of the United States. Kennedy v. Bremerton School District
The case involved a public high school football coach who prayed at midfield after games. The school district fired him, arguing his prayer looked like government endorsement of religion. The Court disagreed, treating the prayer as private religious speech protected by both the Free Exercise Clause and the Free Speech Clause. The majority rejected the position that any visible religious expression by a public employee automatically amounts to coercion of students.9Justia Law. Kennedy v. Bremerton School District
A year later, in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis (2023), the Court held that Colorado could not force a website designer to create wedding websites celebrating marriages that contradicted her beliefs. The majority framed this as a compelled speech case rather than a religious liberty case, ruling that the First Amendment prohibits the government from compelling individuals to create expressive content conveying messages they oppose.10Supreme Court of the United States. 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis The decision drew a line between refusing to serve a customer because of who they are, which remains illegal under public accommodation laws, and refusing to create a specific message, which the First Amendment protects.
A Note on the New Ethics Code
If you have read about the Court adopting its first formal Code of Conduct in November 2023, be aware of what that document does and does not do. The code establishes five canons covering judicial integrity, impropriety, impartiality, outside activities, and political activity, and it addresses gifts, speaking engagements, and recusal.11Supreme Court of the United States. Code of Conduct for Justices of the Supreme Court It did not create any enforcement mechanism. Individual justices still decide for themselves whether to recuse from a case, and the Court described its canons as “broadly worded general principles” that call for judgment rather than rigid rules with automatic consequences. Federal law at 28 U.S.C. ยง 455 does set binding recusal standards, including disqualification where a reasonable person would question a justice’s impartiality or where the justice holds a financial interest in the outcome, but at the Supreme Court level compliance with those standards is essentially self-policed.12Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 USC 455 – Disqualification of Justice, Judge, or Magistrate Judge