A republic, if you can keep it

Do Americans have inalienable rights? Or do we need to ask for each one?

The end of this Supreme Court term has been full of consequential decisions, mostly fulfilling long-term goals of the right: Planned Parenthood stands to lose its standing as a Medicaid provider after Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic; the Equal Protection Clause is less equal and the rights of transgender kids more limited after United States v. Skrmetti.

But today is the final day, and the big decision most were worried about — Trump v. CASA, Inc., the “birthright citizenship” case — has come down, along with the rest of the decisions on the docket. The question in that case is not so much about birthright citizenship (though it’s explicitly about whether a lower court has the right to issue an injunction blocking Donald Trump’s executive order overturning birthright citizenship), but about whether the president can be bound by lower courts or by the law itself at all.