250th birthday minutes on the bench

At the Supreme Court building, there is a small exhibition tied to the nation’s 250th anniversary, titled “Revolutionary Arguments: The Legal Fight for Independence.” The modest ground floor display focuses on how some of the “lawyers, statesmen, and soldiers—some of whom would later become Justices of the Supreme Court—fought tirelessly to bring about a new government.” On the bench in recent weeks, the justices themselves have been providing their own historical lessons, an updated version of “Bicentennial Minutes,” a series of short educational spots broadcast on CBS from 1974 through 1976. Let’s call them “Semiquincentennial Minutes.” (Trademark pending.) Justice Elena Kagan had one such moment with her opinion on June 11 in Abouammo v. United States, a case about proper venue for a federal criminal prosecution. “Not the most obvious thing for the Constitution to care about,” Kagan said from the bench that day. But as her written opinion put it, “Venue in criminal cases mattered more than might be supposed to the Nation’s Founders. Prior to the Revolution, Parliament enacted measures to try allegedly treasonous colonists in England, rather than in their home colonies. The legislation was so roundly despised as to make it into the Declaration of Independence. Among the ‘injuries and usurpations’ listed there was the practice of ’“transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences.’” A week later, the next Semiquincentennial Minute came in United States v. Hemani, in which the court held that the prosecution under a federal gun statute of a man who used marijuana and possessed a firearm was inconsistent with the Second Amendment. Justice Neil Gorsuch detailed the drinking habits of “many notable early Americans,” including John Adams and his tankard of hard cider with breakfast and James Madison’s reported pint of whiskey daily. And last week, in her dissent from the bench in Mullin v. Al Otro Lado, Justice Sonia Sotomayor departed from the text of her opinion to refer to France’s centennial gift to the United States, saying the Statute of Liberty’s lamp was being “extinguished” by the majority’s view of the immigrant arrival policy at issue. Today, there will be another Semiquincentennial Minute or two, but not for a little while. In the guest box, Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s parents, Ed and Martha Kavanaugh, are here today. (It was just his mother last Thursday.) At 9:54 a.m., cutting it a little closer than usual, Solicitor General D. John Sauer leads his office contingent, which includes most of his top deputies, into the courtroom. Civil rights veteran Sherilynn Ifill, now at Howard University law school, arrives and takes a seat in the front row of the bar section, but decides to change seats at the last minute. (There are plenty of seats to choose from in the nearly empty section.) When the court takes the bench, Justice Samuel Alito is absent. Perhaps his unusual outpouring of three opinion announcements last Thursday came about because he has an out-of-town commitment, but we don’t know. Chief Justice John Roberts announces that orders have been filed, and that Justice Amy Coney Barrett has the opinion in Watson v. Republican National Committee. Barrett takes some care to detail the holding that federal election-day statutes do not prevent Mississippi from counting absentee ballots postmarked by election day but received up to fives days after. Among her points is that “early voting would be at risk” if the challengers’ view prevailed. This is one that some predicted after oral argument might go the other way. Barrett announces that Alito has filed a dissent, joined in full by Justice Clarence Thomas and Gorsuch and in part by Kavanaugh. The decision is a loss for leading advocate Paul Clement (who isn’t here) and for Sauer, who personally argued in support of the challengers’ position. Kagan is next with Chatrie v. United States, with the majority holding that the police conducted a search under the Fourth Amendment when they acquired a Virginia man’s cellphone location data from Google because an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in that information. Kagan explains the wide relevance of the case to the courtroom gallery: “As you sit here today, location history may be saving on your phone.” She is otherwise relatively brief in explaining geofence warrants, possible police “fishing expeditions,” and expectations of privacy in the 21st century. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has a concurrence, joined by Sotomayor. Gorsuch has an opinion concurring in the judgment. Alito has the dissent, joined in parts by Thomas and Barrett, while Barrett has her own dissent. Roberts announces that “I have the opinion of the court in two related cases.” This could be the transgender sports cases, but he quickly adds, “I will start with Trump v. Slaughter.” At this moment, reporters in the Press Room are being handed copies of both Slaughter, about President Donald Trump’s attempt to remove a member of the Federal Trade Commission, and Trump v. Cook, about his efforts to remove a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. In fact, the two lengthy opinions have rubber bands around them. But it will be quite a while before we get to Cook. The chief justice starts with his Semiquincentennial Minute. When the framers adopted the Constitution, they vested executive power in just one person, the president, he says. The decision was “not made lightly” as “only 10 years earlier” the country had declared its independence from a king it viewed as a tyrant. Roberts’ written opinion expands on that semiquincentennial history lesson, but from the bench he moves on to the power of independent agencies like the FTC before turning back to James Madison’s views of executive power and the Decision of 1789 confirming the removal power. He spends a fair amount of time on the key precedent at issue in the case, Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, concluding that “it has not stood the test of time.” Roberts addresses several points made by “the dissent,” and there seems to be no misunderstanding that an oral dissent is coming. Roberts explains that Thomas has joined all but one section of his opinion, while Gorsuch has filed a concurring opinion. Sotomayor has the dissent, joined by Kagan and Jackson. Sauer, who argued this case and Cook, appears satisfied with this victory, but he sits in the lead chair at the counsel table with his hands clasped as Sotomayor begins reading from her dissent. “In recent years, this court has strongly increased its absolutist view of presidential power,” Sotomayor says, a theory that is “deeply misguided.” She has her own mini-Semiquincentennial Minute, or moment, discussing the Revolutionary War Debt Commission, which she suggests was an early example of federal agencies for which the president had limited removal power. Sotomayor goes on for nearly 17 minutes, calling the result “profoundly destabilizing” and saying the court is “creating an Executive Branch that Congress never dreamed of establishing and that it now has little hope of ever reining in.” Still, she says that she along with Kagan and Jackson, “respectfully dissent.” Roberts, who has kept his reading glasses on during the dissent, offers no off-the-cuff retorts or rebuttals. He says, “I will now turn to the opinion in Number 25A312, Trump versus Cook.” It is 10:42, and the rest of the world, including the Press Room, the president, the markets, and the nation, have known the outcome of this case for a good half hour before most of us in the courtroom do (given it was already posted on the court’s website and reported on in places such as SCOTUSblog). Roberts has yet another Semiquincentennial Minute with a discussion of the origins of the Federal Reserve system, going back to the Revolutionary War era, involving something called the Bank of North America. From there he moves fairly briskly through the First and Second National Banks before getting to the modern Federal Reserve and then the president’s efforts to remove Lisa Cook for cause. It becomes clear enough where the court is headed when Roberts says “that any definition of ‘cause’ in this context must reflect the Federal Reserve’s unique historical status and role.” He puts almost as much emphasis on the significance of Alexander Hamilton as Ron Chernow and Lin-Manuel Miranda did. The chief justice notes that Kavanaugh and Jackson have filed concurring opinions, and that Thomas has a dissenting opinion, Alito has a dissent joined by Gorsuch, and Barrett has her own dissenting opinion. Roberts had a few points of rebuttal from the bench, apparently to Thomas’ dissent. But none of the dissenters has an oral statement today. This is another defeat for Sauer, who seems to take it in stride in the courtroom, and a victory for Clement, who represented Cook. (He still isn’t here.) With that, the chief justice announces that the court will next sit on Tuesday and “at that time we will announce all remaining opinions ready during this term of the court.” With four cases left, the court may need to check on its supply of rubber bands. Recommended Citation: Mark Walsh, 250th birthday minutes on the bench, SCOTUSblog (Jun. 29, 2026, 4:00 PM), https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/06/250th-birthday-minutes-on-the-bench/