Bonus 232: The Term of the Summary Reversal
The Supreme Court has summarily reversed eight lower-court rulings so far this term—after just two last term and zero the term before. That uptick says a lot about how the justices sees their role.
As I noted in Monday’s regular issue of the newsletter, the Supreme Court last week handed down its eighth summary reversal of the October 2025 Term—rulings that conclusively resolve appeals via unsigned, “per curiam” opinions of the Court at the certiorari stage, without plenary briefing or oral argument. This is quite a surge; last term, the Court issued only two such rulings, and as recently as the October 2023 Term, there were none.
That’s not just a statistical curiosity; it’s the kind of procedural shift that, if it sticks, will quietly reshape how the Court relates to the lower federal and state courts—and to the litigants whose cases get pulled into the Court’s gravitational field without the benefit of briefing, argument, or a signed opinion. As usual, the Court has not explained why it has changed its behavior so dramatically, and I’m not sure the justices could agree on an answer even privately. But as I explain below the fold, the pattern is big enough to be more than a fluke, and it may tell us something quietly important (and disconcerting) about how the justices increasingly view their role.
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