With the start of the U.S. Supreme Court’s term this month, UCLA School of Law has been at the forefront of discussion, scholarship, and advocacy before the high court. This included two events that featured nationally renowned legal commentators – the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter Linda Greenhouse and University of Michigan Law School professor Leah Litman – in conversation with faculty experts.

First, on Oct. 6, the first day of the Court’s term, UCLA Law professor Stuart Banner delivered oral argument in Villarreal v. Texas, representing a man who claimed that his Sixth Amendment right to counsel was violated in his criminal trial. (Read more about Banner’s appearance and the work that students in UCLA Law’s Supreme Court Clinic performed on the case.)

Then, on Oct. 14, the law school co-presented an event at UCLA’s Hammer Museum where Litman – a co-host of the popular Strict Scrutiny podcast – talked about her new book, Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes, with UCLA Law professor Rick Hasen. During their wide-ranging conversation, Litman zeroed in on her thesis, that judicial language disguises a Court that is motivated by political grievance.

Hasen is one of the country’s eminent election law scholars and Supreme Court watchers, and he founded and directs the Safeguarding Democracy Project. In addition to his appearance with Litman, he has been a leading voice in the media, writing an op-ed for MSNBC and otherwise weighing in on pivotal cases at the Court, including the recently argued Louisiana v. Callais, which is expected to impact the future of voting rights in the country. As it happened, UCLA Law alumna Janai Nelson ’96, who serves as the president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, delivered oral argument in Callais, urging preservation of the Voting Rights Act.

Later in the same week, on Oct. 16, New York Times Supreme Court authority Linda Greenhouse came to UCLA Law to participate in the 25th edition of Whither the Court: The Allan C. Lebow Annual Supreme Court Review. There, Greenhouse and UCLA Law faculty members Joseph Fishkin, Cary Franklin, and Ahlian Arulanantham talked about cases involving immigration, gender identity, and more.

Greenhouse also weighed in on the direction in which the Court – increasingly in the political spotlight and at the center of a divided nation – has recently shifted. She pinpointed two developments: the Court’s increased use of the so-called shadow docket and its relationship with public opinion.

Regarding the shadow docket, which describes usually tentative rulings that the Court issues on an emergency basis, Greenhouse cautioned that orders and decisions in these matters have broader impacts than the Court might believe: “These procedural interventions have huge, worldwide, on-the-ground effects.”

As for public opinion, “It’s always been a two-way street,” she said. “It’s not so much that the Court aligns itself with the public, the public also aligns itself with the Court. … What’s different now, I think, for one thing, the country is on edge, the country is paying attention to the Court because the Court has become a player in the culture wars.” She pointed to the 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade and ended the constitutional right to abortion – a largely unpopular decision that caused “an uproar,” where the majority opinion was “deliberately in-your-face about it,” she said.

“The Court’s fundamental view of its role in the country, I think, has diverged from what the public had come to know and expect and feel pretty comfortable with,” she said. “And the Court is paying a heavy price in terms of its perceived legitimacy.”