Illinois Law dean and professor Vikram David Amar was quoted in a recent Wall Street Journal article summarizing the past year on the United States Supreme Court.

In many of the cases this past year, "conservative voices on the court protected conservative voices outside the court," he said.

Amar said many of the term’s rulings preserved the status quo against progressive hopes of gaining ground, rather than actively reversing course. The major exception was the union-dues cases, where the court overruled a 1977 precedent, but Amar noted the court already was heading in that direction before Justice Antonin Scalia’s death in 2016 temporarily prevented the court from doing so.

Read the full article.