UNBIASED - Unbiased University: Everything You Need to Know About the Supreme Court of the United States

Episode Date: March 30, 2026

UNBIASED University is in session! While Jordan is on maternity leave, she’s breaking down the most critical aspects of the United States government — the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the three branches of the federal government, presidential elections, the evolution of political parties, and more. In this episode of UNBIASED Politics, we take an in-depth look at the Supreme Court of the United States, the nation’s highest court and the final authority on questions of federal law and the Constitution. How did the Supreme Court develop into one of the most influential institutions in the country, how are justices selected, and what happens after the Court agrees to hear a case? We walk through the Court’s history, its structure and procedures, the confirmation process for justices, and the role the Court plays in shaping national policy through its decisions. If you have ever wondered how the Supreme Court operates behind the scenes and why its decisions carry such lasting impact, this episode offers a clear and accessible overview of the Court’s role in the U.S. legal system. SUBSCRIBE TO JORDAN'S ⁠FREE NEWSLETTER⁠. ⁠Watch⁠ this episode on YouTube. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome back to Unbiased, your favorite source of unbiased news and legal analysis. Welcome back to Unbiased Politics and to the Unbiased University education series. This is episode nine of the Unbiased University series. And it also happens to be an episode all about the Supreme Court of the United States. So over the last two weeks as part of this Unbiased University series, I put out a three-part mini-series where we talked about the three branches of the federal government. So the legislative branch, the judicial branch, and the executive branch. And the reason that I'm giving you that context is because today's episode will almost serve as

an extension to the judicial branch episode. We covered the Supreme Court briefly in that episode, but it was more so about, you know, the history of the judicial branch, why it was created, what kind of shaped the judicial branch, and just really the federal court system in general. but this episode really dives deep into the Supreme Court specifically, and that's because the Supreme Court is such an important part of our federal government. So it's just really important that we understand its purpose and how it functions. Throughout this episode, I'll pretty much cover everything you need to know about the court. So I'll go through the history of the court, including when it was founded, where the court was originally located, when the court issued its first ever opinion.

and much, much more about the history alone. Then I'll cover the justices. So how many justices sit on the bench? How are the justices selected and appointed? I also include a short biography of each of the justices currently on the bench. I'll discuss the difference between the chief justice and the rest of the justices, also known as the associate justices. I'll discuss the difference between opinions and dissents,

the various aspects of the court procedure, and a lot more. So there's there's just a lot to learn in this episode. And we are expecting some pretty important Supreme Court decisions in the coming months, including cases about presidential power and the separation of powers, birthright citizenship, transgender athlete issues, and more. So I think, I think this is actually a great time to release this episode. Now, I say this at the start of every unbiased university episode, but I want you to think of this unbiased university series as a condensed law

school education. I want you to imagine that every time you're tuning into one of these episodes, you are sitting down in a 30 to 45 minute law school class with me as your professor. And in each class, we cover a different topic and we talk about the various cases and laws that have shaped those topics. By the end of this series, you will have obtained your imaginary degree from unbiased university, which means that you will be fully prepared for the show when I come back from maternity leave and get back to reporting on current events. because all of these concepts that we're talking about, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the three branches of government, presidential elections, et cetera, they're all in the background

of every single current event that we talk about. So it's really important that we all understand them. Now, although I am on maternity leave, as a reminder, if you are still interested in getting an unbiased rundown of current events, I am still cranking out articles on substack when I can. So definitely go ahead and subscribe to my substack by clicking. the link in the show notes for this episode. It's totally free. I just need your email address so that I can send you those articles when they go out. Okay. So without further ado, let's talk about the Supreme Court. First and foremost, the Supreme Court is the highest court in the land. Okay. It can be found at one first street northeast in Washington, D.C. It is a gorgeous spectacular building. If you've

ever been. I highly recommend going and seeing it at least once in your life. The court is made up of nine justices, one of which is the chief justice. The other eight justices are known as associate justices. And we'll get into the role of a chief justice and how the chief justice differs from the associate justices in a little bit. But I want to run through a little bit of history first. So when the Supreme Court was created, there were six justices on the court. And that number changed five times after that until Congress eventually landed on nine in the year 1869, and that is where it has stayed ever since. So how did the Supreme Court come about? Well, the answer starts with the Judiciary Act of 1789. So on September 24th, 1789, President George Washington

signed the Judiciary Act into law. And what that law did is it created the structure and jurisdiction of the federal court system, including the Supreme Court. Okay. So a lot of the government was laid out in the Constitution, but the judicial branch was kind of an afterthought. And so that's why it wasn't until President Washington signed this law that really the structure and jurisdiction of the federal court system came about. And again, when the Supreme Court was first created, it consisted of six justices who served during quote unquote good behavior, which is basically lifetime tenure unless they resign, retire, or they're removed through impeachment. That's actually still the rule today. On the original court, John Jay was the Chief Justice,

and the associate justices were John Rutledge, William Cushing, John Blair, Robert Harrison, and James Wilson. But here's the part that people don't always realize. The Supreme Court didn't look anything like the institution that we know today, at least not at first, okay? Because if you think about this, the Supreme Court didn't even meet right away. So it was created in September 1789, but its first session wasn't until about five months later in February of 1790. And they met at the Merchants Exchange Building in New York City. New York City was the nation's capital at the time. So in the early years, the court wasn't, it wasn't really like powerful or glamorous. It was not what it what it is today. The justices didn't even have their own building. That's why they

met at that merchants building in New York City. They worked out of whatever government space was available to them in the country's capital. And at one point, they worked out of Capitol Hill. Like, they just, they just worked wherever they could. And in the beginning, the court's docket was very small. The justices usually heard less than 10 cases in any given year. That's at least, at least goes for the first 10 years of the court's existence. And the justices spent a lot of their time doing something called a riding circuit, which is basically traveling around the country to hear cases because the federal court system was still brand new and it was spread pretty thin. The court's first opinion came in 1791 in a case called West versus Barnes. And it was a pretty

boring case, I will spare you. It was mostly a procedural case about the technical requirements for appeals. Really nothing too interesting. The court's first really big case was in 1803. It was a case called Marbury v. Madison, arguably the biggest case in the history of the Supreme Court. You do not go to law school without learning about Marbury v. Madison. Okay. So Marbury versus Madison established the idea that the Supreme Court can declare laws unconstitutional. And this is called judicial review. It's basically the entire purpose of the court nowadays, okay? But the court didn't have that power until Marbury v. Madison.

So with Marbury, the court took on an entirely new meaning. And I mentioned this a second ago when I said that, you know, although the Supreme Court is this huge, huge part of our federal government today, wasn't always like that. But I didn't mention the fact that, okay, so I did mention that the judicial branch was kind of an afterthought for the founding fathers, right? And what I didn't mention is that it was such an afterthought that the Constitution doesn't even specify any specific qualifications or requirements for the justices. So technically, you don't even need to go to law school or have experience as a judge to become a Supreme Court justice. Nowadays, most of the justices,

have years of experience in the law as both attorneys and judges, but it was not always like that. Of the nine justices that are currently on the bench, all of them have law degrees and most of them have experience as judges. The one exception is Justice Kagan. She's never served as a judge before joining the Supreme Court. But other than that, they all have law degrees. They all have experience as judges. So again, the Constitution does not specify any particular qualifications, which also means that a president can essentially nominate whoever they want to the Supreme Court. I mean, technically, right? We don't really see that happen, but it could happen.

Now, when a vacancy happens on the bench, the sitting president nominates a justice to fill that vacancy. The nominee then has to submit a detailed questionnaire, which asks questions about various things like tax records, income information, educational background, etc. From there, the nominee will sit before the Senate Judiciary Committee for a series of hearings where they are asked about themselves, their background, their experiences, their beliefs, how they feel about past Supreme Court rulings, et cetera. And these hearings typically last on average 60 days. And then from there, the Senate Judiciary Committee will vote to send a nomination to the full Senate with either a recommendation of approval or a recommendation of rejection. Whether the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee approve or reject a nominee,

it typically falls in line with their political party. Now, that's not always the case. Okay, we do see exceptions, but it is typical. So from there, the full Senate will hold their own hearings and then the full Senate will vote on the nominee. The final vote in the Senate only requires a simple majority of the present Senate. senators to pass. If there is a tie, the vice president as president of the Senate breaks the tie. If the vote passes, the president will then formally appoint the justice to the court, and that is when

the appointee recites the oath. So there are two oaths that a justice has to take before they officially take their seat on the bench. There is a constitutional oath, and then there's the judicial oath. So the constitutional oath is an oath taken by all federal officers to support the Constitution. This includes members of the executive judicial and legislative branches. It's not exclusive to justices. The judicial oath, on the other hand, gets its origins from that judiciary act that we talked about earlier. The judicial oath reads as follows, I solemnly swear that I will administer justice without respect to persons and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me as blank,

insert name here. Under the Constitution and laws of the United States, so help me God. So those are the two oaths that a justice has to take before officially taking their position on the bench, and that is what the appointment process looks like. Let's take our first break here. When we come back, we'll talk about the nine justices currently on the bench, and we'll talk a bit about their backgrounds and political leanings. You're not going to be a dictator, are you? I said, no, no, no, other than day one. How did Donald Trump turn the presidency into a king?

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Visit Masterplanpodcast.com or search Masterplan in your podcast app to start listening right now. Welcome back. Let's talk about the nine justices. is currently on the bench of the Supreme Court, but first I want to briefly distinguish between the Chief Justice and the eight Associate Justices. So all nine justices have equal votes when deciding cases, okay? But the Chief Justice has certain administrative and leadership responsibilities that the associate justices don't have. So the Chief Justice runs oral arguments in the courtroom. The Chief Justice also runs private conferences behind the scenes. He assigned,

who writes the court's opinion so long as he's part of the majority in a case. And he also serves as administrative head of the entire federal court system, not just the Supreme Court. That includes overseeing the judicial conference of the United States, setting policy for federal courts nationwide, and helping manage court budgets and administration. The chief justice also presides over presidential impeachment trials in the Senate. So if a president is impeached, and then that impeachment heads to a trial in the Senate, the chief justice is who presides over that trial. The chief justice also delivers the judiciary's annual report to Congress, and he represents the court in government functions. So his vote counts the same as the other

eight justices when it comes to cases. He just has a much bigger job than the others when it comes to these administrative and leadership roles. And actually, the court is named after after the Chief Justice. So the current court is referred to as the Roberts court, whereas prior to the Roberts court, it was called the Rehnquist court after Chief Justice William Rehnquist. So Chief Justice Roberts, let's talk about him. Chief Justice Roberts was nominated by President George W. Bush in 2005 following the death of Chief Justice Rehnquist. Roberts took his seat on the bench in September 2005 after being confirmed by the Senate. He is a double Harvard graduate, and he started his legal career clerking for a federal appellate judge,

and then later for then Justice William Rehnquist on the Supreme Court. He went on to serve in the Reagan administration, including as associate counsel to the president and as special assistant to the attorney general, and then later became principal deputy solicitor general, which meant that he represented the federal government before the Supreme Court. So if the federal government had to, you know, argue a case at the Supreme Court, he was the one arguing on behalf of the government. Then after that, he practiced law in Washington, D.C. for about 10 years before being appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Not long after that is when he was nominated to the Supreme Court and became Chief Justice. Ideologically,

Roberts is more often than not described as a moderate conservative, but most importantly, he is considered an institutionalist. And that means he's someone who prioritizes the legitimacy and stability of the court as an institution. Next, we will move on to the associate justices and we'll go through them in order of seniority. So we'll start with the most senior justice and then we'll end with the most recent appointment. Justice Clarence Thomas, he is the most senior justice. He was appointed in 1991 by President George H.W. Bush. Justice Thomas is arguably one of the most conservative justices on the bench, in large part because he's an originalist through and through. And that means that he believes the Constitution should be interpreted how the words would have been understood when they were written, not how we might interpret them today.

Justice Thomas attended the College of the Holy Cross for undergrad and Yale for law school. after law school he worked as an assistant attorney general in Missouri. He practiced in the private sector for a bit, and then he later served as a legislative assistant to a U.S. senator. He then held various federal roles, including assistant secretary for civil rights at the Department of Education and chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In 1990, he took his first judicial position on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and he served there for less than a year before being nominated to the Supreme Court by President

George H.W. Bush in 91. One of the more important parts of Justice Thomas's judicial philosophy is his strong opposition to affirmative action. So he actually got into Yale Law School because of the Open Admissions Program that offered positions to black students. in an all-white college. But he's spoken very openly about various experiences that he had over the course of his life, where he felt that some of his colleagues attributed his success to his race rather than merit. And because of that, he has been openly against affirmative action, and he was one of the justices who voted to strike down affirmative action in 2023. He was adamantly against keeping affirmative action in place. So that's a lot of

Justice Thomas. Then we have Justice Samuel Alito. Justice Alito was nominated by President George W. Bush in 2005, officially took his seat on the bench in January 2006. He attended undergrad at Princeton and he went to Yale for law school. A fun fact about Justice Alito is that in his Princeton yearbook, he said that one of his aspirations was to become a Supreme Court justice. after graduating law school, he clerked for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, and he went on to serve as an assistant U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey. He later worked in the office of the U.S. Solicitor General before being appointed by President Reagan as U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey.

He was then appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit by President George H.W. Bush, and he served there for 16 years. And as we said, in 2006, he took his position on the Supreme Court bench replacing Justice O'Connor. Ideologically, Justice Alito is generally considered conservative, but his decisions aren't too predictable. He tends to take cases one at a time and sometimes leans into more libertarian reasoning, actually. He is thought of as, as, conservative and he is I mean he is one of the conservative justices on the bench but he does sometimes lean into that more libertarian reasoning it just really depends on the case then next we have justice soda sonya sodomayor justice sona mayor was nominated by president obama in 2009 she

went to princeton for undergrad Yale for law school same education path as justice alito actually and after law school she worked as an assistant district attorney in the new york County District Attorney's Office. She spent about five years there prosecuting cases and then she moved into private practice and eventually became a partner similar to Justice Kavanaugh, who we'll talk about in a minute. In 1991, President George H.W. Bush nominated her to the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York. And she served there until 1998 when President Clinton appointed her to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. She served on the Second Circuit until 2009 when President Obama nominated her to the Supreme Court.

Ideologically, she is described as liberal, and some even consider her to be the most liberal justice currently on the court. Then we have Justice Alina Kagan, who was also appointed by President Obama in 2010. She also went to undergrad at Princeton, then she went to Harvard for law school. She started her career clerking for the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. And by the way, I've said clerking a lot through this discussion, and I realize many of you might not be familiar with that term. So when you clerk for a judge or a justice, you are basically their right hand. Okay, you're doing all the dirty work. You help research cases. You draft opinions. you work through legal arguments.

A lot of law school graduates try to get a clerkship after graduating, but they're not easy positions to get. They are highly sought after, but they're very competitive. Not easy to get. If you get one, it's great on your resume. So Kagan first clerked for the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. circuit and then later clerked for a justice on the Supreme Court in the late 80s. after her clerkships, she briefly practiced law, and then she became a law professor.

She went on to serve four years in the Clinton administration, first as associate counsel to the president, and then later as deputy assistant to the president for domestic policy. And from 2003 to 2009, Justice Kagan actually served as the dean of Harvard Law School. President Obama then nominated her to be Solicitor General of the United States, and about a year later she was nominated to the Supreme Court. And as I mentioned earlier, Justice Kagan is unique in that she is the only justice on the bench that had never served as a judge before joining the court. She clerked for judges and justices, but that's not the same thing as actually having, you know, been a judge herself. So she is the only justice that came to the Supreme Court without having

any sort of judicial experience herself. Ideologically, her views are liberal and progressive. Next, we have Justice Neil Gorset. Justice Gorsuch was nominated by President Trump. He took his seat on the Supreme Court in April 2017. He filled the vacancy left by Justice Scalia when Justice Scalia passed away. Justice Gorsuch went to Columbia for undergrad. He went to Harvard for law school. And he was actually classmates with President Obama. Early in his law career, he clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and then later clerked for two Supreme Court justices. After clerking, he worked. He worked in private practice and then later briefly served as principal deputy associate attorney general at the DOJ that was during the George W. Bush administration. And he was later appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit where he served as a judge for almost a decade. And in addition to his time as a judge, he did teach law school at the University of Colorado law school. And he served on various committees within the federal judiciary. Gorsuch is a

is often described as a constitutional originalist, meaning like Thomas, he believes the constitution should be interpreted according to its original meaning, as it was intended by our founding fathers. And ideologically, he leans conservative. Then we have Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Justice Kavanaugh was nominated by President Trump as well in 2018. He is a double Yale, meaning he went to Yale for both undergrad and law school. And after graduating, he clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and then later clerked for Justice Kennedy on the Supreme Court. From there, he held various positions, including working in the Office of Independent

Council and practicing law in D.C. He was actually made partner at that D.C. law firm before serving in the White House as Associate Counsel and then later Senior Associate Counsel to President George W. Bush. After that, he was appointed as a judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, where he served more than 10 years. And in 2018, he finally took his seat on the Supreme Court. Ideologically, he is described more often than not as the court's median justice. So he tends to be more moderate, though he does have a slight conservative lien. And then second to last, we have Justice Amy Coney Barrett. Justice Barrett, also nominated by President Trump, but in 2020. She attended Rhodes College for undergrad and then Notre Dame for law school. After graduating,

she clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and then went on to clerk for Justice Scalia on the Supreme Court. After clerking, she spent some time in private practice before becoming a law professor at Notre Dame. And in 2017, she was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. Three years later in 2020 is when she was appointed to the Supreme Court. Ideologically, Justice Barrett is considered conservative and does carry with her an appreciation for originalism in part because of her clerkship with Scalia. Scalia was one of the court's most well-known originalists.

So she kind of inherited that from her clerkship with him. And then finally, we have Justice Katanji Brown Jackson. Justice Jackson is the first black woman to serve on the Supreme Court, and she was nominated by President Biden in 2022. She went to Harvard Radcliffe College for undergrad, which was Harvard's Women's College before it merged, and then she went to Harvard Law School. After law school, she clerked for a federal district court in Massachusetts, then for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, and later for Justice Breyer on the Supreme Court. after clerking, she spent a few years in private practice. She held a few government positions. She eventually returned to private practice for a few more years before ultimately being

nominated by President Obama in 2012 to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. She served there from 2013 to 2021. And in 2021, President Biden appointed her to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. And then about a year later appointed her to the Supreme Court. where she officially took her seat in June 2020. Ideologically, Justice Jackson is described as a liberal centrist similar to Justice Breyer. And you'll notice this pattern with a lot of the justices.

Those early clerkships tend to influence how they approach the law later in their careers. So those are the nine justices currently on the bench. Let's take our second and final break here. When we come back, we'll talk a little more about the ideological leaning. of each justice, and then we'll finish the episode talking about court procedure. Welcome back. Before we took a break, I gave you the bios of each justice. And when I described each justice, I mentioned their ideological alignment. And I know a lot of people think justices are supposed to be completely impartial, that they're not supposed to lean one way or

another. But the reality is they're human, just like you and I. Okay, they have ideological views that are shaped by their own experiences and values and how they see the world, it's just human nature. So one time I got the question, you know, if the law is the law, shouldn't all justices rule the same way or see it the same way? And the answer is no, because the role of the court is to interpret the law, right? And the law is rarely black and white. The reason we have the courts to interpret the law is because the law is ambiguous. It can be interpreted in many ways. And one thing that's really hammered into in law school is that, the answer to any legal question is almost always it depends. And that's why we have lawyers,

because the same law can reasonably be argued in different ways depending on the facts and perspective. And Supreme Court justices are lawyers. This is what they do. They're interpreting the same text, but through different lenses. So sure, sometimes, you know, they see an issue the same way you'll get a unanimous decision. But a lot of the time, they'll see the same legal question differently because of their ideological views, because of their experiences, because of, you know, how their knowledge of the law has been shaped. So in 2023, political scientists, Andrew Martin, and Kevin Quinn did this analysis where they placed the justices on an ideological spectrum. And on that spectrum, a lower score indicates a more

liberal justice and a higher score indicates a more conservative justice. So think of it as, yeah, as like this scale, right? So from most liberal to most conservatives as far as justice is currently on the bench, that scale looks like this. All the way to the left, Justice Sotomayor, then Justice Kagan, then Justice Jackson, then Chief Justice Roberts. Then it goes, as you start to go more to the right, Justice Kavanaugh, Justice Barrett, Justice Gorsuch, Justice Thomas, and all the way on the right, Justice Alito. And it's interesting because their scoring has changed a bit over the years. So they previously had Justice Thomas as the most conservative, but Justice Alito has now taken that position. Chief Justice Roberts is still considered the

most moderate with Justice Kavanaugh almost tied with him. And if you're interested in the exact scores. Sotomayor got a score, remember, the most, the lowest score is more liberal. The higher the score, the more conservative. So, Justice Sotomayor got a score of negative 4.09. Kagan got negative 2.07. Jackson, negative 1.7. Roberts, 0.42.42. So not, you know, in the middle of negative 1 and 1, pretty close to 0, pretty close to the middle. Kavanaugh very close, 0.45, Barrett, 0.82, Gorsuch, 1.08, Thomas, 2.36, and Alito, 2.57. Okay. So let's finish this episode talking about what the Supreme Court procedure actually looks like. Each Supreme Court term begins on the first Monday in October and runs until the first Monday in October of the following year. So technically, the term lasts a full year. But with that said, the court typically finishes releasing its decisions late June or very, very early July. And after that,

the court is essentially in recess until arguments begin again in October. So in practice, the justices are actively hearing cases and issuing decisions from October through June. And then they generally have most of July, all of August, and then all of September off. As for oral arguments, from October through December, arguments are heard during the first two weeks of each month. Then from January through April, arguments are heard during the last two weeks of each month. And during those two week sittings, oral arguments are typically heard on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays. But that schedule can change, you know, if the court decides otherwise. Most days, that the court does hear arguments. It's two arguments per day back to back. The first of the two arguments starts at 10 a.m. And each case gets one hour total 30 minutes per side. But the arguments rarely take an hour, okay? Because think about it like this. During this 30 minute period that each side has, not only do they have to present their case, but all nine justices are actively asking questions

because this is really their only opportunity to press the attorneys on the issues and get their specific questions answered, right? So some arguments can take up to two to three hours. It really just depends on the case. The general rule, though, is that each case takes an hour. Now, in terms of format, if you did speech and debate in high school, this will sound familiar to you. the petitioner, which is the party asking the court to hear the case, goes first. They can reserve some of their time for a rebuttal at the end, but they don't have to. If the petitioner does not reserve time, they'll use their full 30 minutes. The respondent, which is basically the defendant, then argues their position for 30 minutes.

And that's it. But if the petitioner reserves, let's say, five minutes for rebuttal, the petitioner will argue first for 25 minutes, the respondent will argue for 30, and then the petitioner will come back at the end for a five-minute rebuttal. So now, once oral arguments are over, when do the justices decide the case? That happens during the justices conferences. So there are two conferences each week on Wednesday afternoons and Friday afternoons. On Wednesdays, they'll talk about the cases that they heard on Monday, and on Fridays, they'll talk about the cases they heard Tuesday and Wednesday. Now, during this time when decisions are pending, justices are not allowed to discuss their cases

outside the court. So they can discuss the case with their law clerk, their staff, their colleagues, but they cannot talk about their case outside of that. They can't go to dinner with their friends and talk about their cases, right? So when conference begins, this is when the justices all get together and they discuss their cases, the chief justice calls the meeting to order. All the then shake hands and they get to work. And one thing worth pointing out here, regardless of ideological differences, okay, so what's interesting about the court and what I respect about the court so much is that in Congress, you see this like fighting all the time, right? There's infighting between parties, the two parties are fighting with each other nonstop. They're always talking bad about each other.

The justices famously have tons of respect towards one another. Even for when they strongly disagree. And one of the best examples of this is the friendship between Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, liberal, and Justice Scalia, a conservative. They were best friends, despite being on opposite ends of the ideological spectrum, right? Like best friends. They loved opera. They went to opera together. They celebrated New Year's together with their spouses. They took vacations together. There are stories until the end of time about their friendship, and they had so much respect and admiration for one another. And I just love their friends. And I just love their friendship because it just illustrates how no matter what, the Supreme Court justices always show

respect toward one another. And yes, Justice Ginsburg and Justice Scalia had had one of the most notorious friendships. But, you know, even the justices that don't have that level of friendship, they are still incredibly respectful. So just wanted to point that out. But once the conference begins, the first order of business is usually petitions for certiorari or requests asking the court to hear a case. The justices will then vote on whether to grant or deny those petitions. Most of them are denied. After that, the justices talk about the cases that were argued since their last conference. And each justice has an opportunity to speak, but there is a formal order. So the chief justice speaks first at these conferences and takes the opportunity to express his views on a case,

raise any questions or concerns that he might have, etc. Then after the chief justice, the other justices get their chance to speak, but it's in descending order of seniority. And the most junior justice speaks last. So on the current court, Roberts would speak first as chief justice. Thomas would speak second, Sotomayor would speak third, and so on and so forth, until Justice Jackson speaks last. Once all of the justices have spoken their piece, the chief justice casts the first vote,

and then again, each justice casts their vote in order of seniority. Once all of the votes are counted, the chief justice assigns a justice in the majority to write the opinion of the court. But that's only if the chief justice is part of the majority. If the chief justice is in the dissent, then the most senior justice in the majority assigns the opinion instead. If the chief justice is in the majority, the most senior justice in the dissent

assigns the dissenting opinion. So the chief justice could decide, like let's say the chief justice is in the majority. Let's just say it's a five to four case. I don't know. It's a close one. The chief justice is in the majority. He's one of the five justices that are in the majority.

He can write the opinion himself, and oftentimes in the bigger cases, in the more controversial cases, he does. but he can also assign it to any one of the other four justices in the majority. If the, well, let's stick with that example, Chief Justice is in the majority. The most senior justice in the dissent will assign whoever writes the dissenting opinion. And it could be themselves.

It could be one of the other justices in the dissent. Now, if the rules are reverse, if the chief justice is in the dissent, then he would assign the dissenting opinion and the most senior justice in the majority. would assign the majority opinion. So hopefully that makes sense. And then also keep in mind, there's only one majority opinion, but any justice can write a separate dissent if they are in the dissent. That's if they choose to do so. And then there's also something called a concurring opinion.

And that's when a justice agrees with the outcome of the case, but not necessarily the reasoning. So they agree on who wins. They just don't necessarily agree on why. And in that case, they might write a concurrence to explain why they took a different route to get to the same outcome, but they're still considered to be in the majority. Now, ties are rare because there are nine justices. So really, a tie can only happen if there's a vacancy or if a judge recuse a justice recuses themselves due to a conflict of interest. And conflict of interest could be, let's say, a recent example, Justice Jackson, was part of the board of Harvard or something with Harvard. And they were arguing a case at the

Supreme Court. She obviously had a conflict of interest there. So she recused herself from the case, meaning eight justices heard that case. And when there's a true tie, so a four to four split, what will happen is the lower court's decision will stand. There is no rehearing. That's just it. If there is a tie at the Supreme Court, they just say the lower court's decision stands, whatever that is. Finally, when it comes to releasing opinions, unanimous decisions often come out earlier, while the more controversial cases tend to be released towards the end of the term. Now, this isn't always the case, but it definitely is common practice. So, for example, in 2025, the Supreme Court waited until the very end of June to release their decision in their decision in Trump versus

Casa, which was the case that limited nationwide injunctions. That was a big one. And then also they waited to release the decision in Mahmoud versus Taylor, which dealt with religious opt-outs from school lessons. In 2024, the court waited until the end of June to release a case that dealt with bump stocks for firearms. Loper versus Riemundo overturned the 40-year-old Chevron doctrine that was saved for last. So the more controversial, and then of course, when Roe v. Wade was overturned with Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, that was also saved for the last day of the term. So typically, the more controversial of the case, the later gets released.

But that is how the court's procedure works. And that is what I have for you. I really hope you enjoyed yet another class at Unbiased University. And I hope to see you in the next class where we will cover everything there is to know about presidential elections in the United States.