Click here – Essay- FINAL FULLY EDITED 23.04.2026 – 4.21 PM
I respectfully attach an essay which discusses some important recent case decisions of the United States Supreme Court, which have allegedly been decided along partisan lines. The essay shows how these decisions can raise rule of law issues in the United States; and it speculates whether they may have an influence in other jurisdictions.
You may query the essay’s relevance to your interests, but if you’ve been watching public events over the past decade, you may be troubled by the increasing pressures on the rule of law, in democracies where this has never previously been an issue. This is particularly so in America, but in other democracies as well, even if less sensationally and less far reaching. In Australia, for example, members of the judiciary have been speaking out about unacceptable pressures on the justice system and the judiciary itself. Two speeches that come to mind have been delivered by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of NSW, the Hon Chief Justice Andrew Bell, and the Hon Justice Jaqueline Gleeson of the High Court of Australia. The Law Societies of NSW and of England and Wales have been emphasising the same issues. In late 2025, a (UK) House of Lords Constitution Committee conducted a wide-ranging inquiry into the Rule of Law. The Grattan Institute has just launched a document entitled “For the people – future-proofing Australia’s Democracy”. The level of concern is reflected in the number of papers being written on this theme.
In the United States, the assault on the rule of law is taking place in a variety of ways. For lawyers, if one were to single out one incident portending a crisis, it might be the cave-in to the pressure exerted by the US President, on several US-based international law firms. This was intended to intimidate firms representing President Trump’s political adversaries or challenging his administration’s policies in court. Running a close second would be President Trump’s frequent attempts to attack or intimidate the courts and individual judges. His recent attendance (a first for a US president) at the Supreme Court, during part of the hearing of oral arguments in the Birthright Citizens case (Trump v. Barbara) earlier this month – has given rise to speculation that his intention was to place pressure on the Justices to decide in favour of the Administration.
Whilst most of the essay is taken up with the Court’s recent decisions, a later section looks at the Australian situation. I put the question whether decisions of the highest court in the world’s most powerful nation might have extra-territorial influence. Could they be invoked in Australia in support of positions, policies or even in decisions by our own courts that might be claimed to be consistent with the rule of law, but actually are not?
Supreme Court cases are frequently less about dry legal argument than they are about standards that should apply in a fair society. My essay implies that we should all be open to accepting certain societal rights even if we don’t personally go along with them. Issues about human rights are central to several of the cases mentioned in my essay, a selection of which might be summarised via the following questions:
Should Mr and Mrs Loving have the right to live together as man and wife despite being respectively of different races, as the state of Virginia tried to say they couldn’t (Loving v. Virginia)? Should same sex marriage be constitutionally permitted (as it now is, since Obergefell V. Hodges)? Is it right that the Supreme Court has washed its hands of hearing cases based on flagrantly racial (or partisan) gerrymandering of electoral boundary lines, declaring them ‘non-justiciable’ (as it did in Rucho V Common Cause)? Is the Court correct when it claims that the protections against electoral boundary changes – afforded to black voters in certain southern states since the Voting Rights Act of 1965 – can now be removed (as the Court decreed they could in Shelby V Holder)? Should masked and armed men (ICE) have the power to roam around, apprehending US citizens, on the grounds of their racial appearance and where they work, as the Court now has ruled (in an emergency order) in Noem V. Vasquez Perdomo? Should the Court allow itself the liberty of overruling case law decisions on grounds that (in the view of the conservative majority) those cases were ‘egregiously’ decided – as the Court declared forty-nine years later – in respect of the abortion case of Roe V Wade?
How should we respond to these moral issues in respect of our own country? You may have viewed Annabel Crabb’s recent program ‘Civic Duty’ (reminding us of what is good about our democracy) and a current program titled ‘Judgment: Cases that changed Australia’. This traces the circumstances leading to certain key case decisions of the High Court of Australia. Outcomes in cases such as Mabo, Roach and others go to how we define ourselves as a humane democracy.
Due to my current absence in France, the essay will not, at this point, be submitted for publication. Instead, distribution will take place through circles and groups. These will include US and UK based international law firms, individual lawyers and citizens. Given that the issues raised in the essay are just as relevant to Civil Law countries, such as France, (where I worked as a lawyer for many years), an attempt will be made during my stay to have it distributed in that country, to law firms with whom I interacted; and via a political contact, to members of the French National Assembly.
I would nevertheless invite any reader to pass on the essay to your contacts, as a means of reaching more readers than I can achieve alone.
Supreme Court watching is a fascinating pastime, as I feel sure you will agree, if you make it through the essay.
Good reading.
Kind regards,
Anthony Abrahams