One Step Closer to Constitutional Rupture

Reflections on the meaning of Trump v. CASA

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett and retired Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy listen as US President Donald Trump addresses a joint session of Congress at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, on March 4, 2025. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

I’m not sure if the Supreme Court’s majority opinion in Trump v. CASA, which was announced on Friday, the last day of the court’s term, counts as a landmark decision. I’m not a law professor, and the case didn’t involve an interpretation of the Constitution. (It is based mainly on an interpretation of the Judiciary Act of 1789.) So maybe, technically, that makes it something less than a landmark.

But regardless, the decision is big and important—with enormous implications for the present and future of self-government in the United States. In what follows, I will first lay out why I think the decision is bad before suggesting an alternative way of understanding what’s going on with the evolution of our political and legal institutions. That alternative won’t exactly redescribe the outcome in the case as good. But may well help to explain why it (or something like it) was to some extent inevitable.

The Decision and Its Dangers