Mark Tushnet

The explosive leak of a Supreme Court draft opinion suggesting the imminent reversal of Roe v. Wade has proved quite the Rorschach test for a country long divided over this most fundamental of moral issues. The usual combatants have reacted predictably, even though the document is, hello, only a “draft” by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. and may or may not receive the predicted approval by five conservative justices. Pity Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who had this unprecedented leak on his watch and has ordered an investigation. ... Alito does his best to argue that it is not only conservatives who found the original reasoning in Roe lacking. As cited in the brief, Archibald Cox, who served as solicitor general under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, remarked that Roe “read[s] like a set of hospital rules and regulations” that “Neither historian, layman, nor lawyer will be persuaded … are part of … the Constitution.” Harvard constitutional scholar and author Mark Tushnet called Roe a “totally unreasoned judicial opinion.”

During periods of autocratic, populist upheaval, judges tend to find themselves in the political crosshairs. Faced with leaders who are bent on hollowing out the rule of law, the judiciary often must choose between bending the knee and defiantly asserting the supremacy of fundamental legal norms, come what may. ... Still, not everyone is quite so worried about the political nature of America’s judiciary, nor with the populist direction that many democracies are taking (or have taken). As Harvard Law’s Mark Tushnet and Bojan Bugarič of the University of Sheffield write in their new book, Power to the People, populism in and of itself is not the threat that many commentators and politicians have painted it to be. They prefer to view populism as a means of governing, which “must be considered together with its host ideology.”

After all of the entreaties from top Republicans to show respect at Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation hearings, Senator Ted Cruz on Tuesday afternoon chose to grill the first Black woman nominated for the Supreme Court on her views on critical race theory and insinuate that she was soft on child sexual abuse. The message from the Texas Republican seemed clear: A Black woman vying for a lifetime appointment on the highest court in the land would, Mr. Cruz suggested, coddle criminals, go easy on pedophiles and subject white people to the view that they were, by nature, oppressors. ... But to Mark Victor Tushnet, a Harvard law professor who clerked for Justice Marshall, the attacks against Judge Jackson have been far less veiled than those against Justice Marshall. “Dog whistles are supposed to be things that you can’t hear but that you receive in the subconscious,” Mr. Tushnet said. “This is all quite open.”

When Thurgood Marshall arrived at the Capitol for his Supreme Court confirmation hearing on a July day in 1967, the 58-year-old lawyer was the most celebrated legal advocate in the civil rights movement. He had braved death threats and successfully argued more than two dozen cases before the Supreme Court, including decisions that ensured Black voters could cast primary ballots in Texas and ended government-mandated segregation in public schools. ... The esoteric probing was Thurmond’s way of hinting that “Marshall wasn’t intellectually up to the job,” said Harvard Law School professor Mark Victor Tushnet, who clerked for Marshall and has written two books on him.

Ketanji Brown Jackson, seen by Democrats as a top contender for a future Supreme Court vacancy, is one of three judges assigned the weighty task of reviewing former President Trump's bid to block a congressional subpoena for records related to the Jan. 6 attack. ... Still, if Jackson votes against Trump in the pending case, they said, it’s a near certainty that Republicans would use it against her if she is eventually tapped for the high court. “The chance is 100 percent that Republicans will use her vote against her,” said Mark Tushnet, a law professor at Harvard. “The only interesting question is how they would spin a vote for Trump against her — probably to say that it shows that she casts her votes with an eye to how it's going to benefit her.”

Legal experts offered a variety of predictions Thursday on whether the US Supreme Court is poised to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision establishing a woman’s constitutional right to get an abortion. At least five and maybe six of the justices on the nine-member court are “ready to overturn Roe and its legacy,” said Mark Tushnet, an emeritus Harvard Law School professor. “I think it was clear with the appointment of Justice [Amy Coney] Barrett that there was a firm majority to repudiate the court’s abortion-related jurisprudence.” But other experts were less sure of how the high court will rule or suggested it would move incrementally, rather than make a sweeping move.

Former President Trump left office as numerous lawsuits against him and his administration still hung in the balance, a result that legal experts say was part of a calculated strategy to run out the clock and avoid accountability while in the White House. By dragging his feet in court, Trump evaded subpoenas for his tax returns and dodged a final ruling on whether his continued business dealings violated the Constitution’s ban on profiting off the presidency. His administration also upended the legal process, experts say, by treating emergency requests to the Supreme Court as a standard litigation move, often with success...Some legal actions focused on Trump, like efforts to obtain his tax returns, are expected to continue post-presidency. But experts say that while he was in office, Trump's drain-the-clock strategy allowed him to avoid accountability and carry out policies before their lawfulness was ultimately resolved, leaving key questions about executive power unanswered as President Biden took office Jan. 20...Mark Tushnet, a Harvard Law professor, said Trump’s approach worked in part due to some of the legal vulnerabilities in these cases. Embedded in the emoluments disputes, for instance, were thorny questions about who had a legal right to sue. “Sometimes the claims about Trump's actions had some weak spots,” Tushnet said. “Maybe not enough to lead to an inevitable defeat for Trump, but enough to take up time in litigating.”

There will be no tourists dotting the sprawling green grass of the Capitol lawn as Joe Biden is inaugurated the 46th president of the United States. There will be no cheering crowds, no vendors hawking merchandise. The monuments named in honor of former presidents — Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson — will be closed. But there will be protests — exactly two, with fewer than 100 demonstrators at each, tucked away near the National Archives and Union Station inside a secure perimeter, along largely vacant D.C. streets...First Amendment experts are closely watching the unfolding scene in the District. Though safety and free speech can coexist, legal experts said, they caution against overreach as an unprecedented portion of federal parks, major roads and access to government buildings are shut down. “The more restrictions there are, the more troubling it is for democracy,” said Mark Tushnet, a retired Harvard Law School professor and First Amendment scholar. “It may be completely understandable given security concerns or threats, but it is still a cost.” ... Virtually no one will be there to witness the demonstrations, which Tushnet said can feel to activists like being “put in a box” by officials. “The theory these days is that even though these demonstrators are, in some cases, being put quite far from the event or people they’re protesting, the method of getting your message out has changed some,” Tushnet said. “It’s no longer by shouting at people directly but rather through media, including social media, and for that it really doesn’t matter how close you are to the venue.”