2024 SCOTUS Roundup
Columbia Law faculty discussed the implications of important Supreme Court decisions from the 2023–2024 term.

Touching on administrative law, bankruptcy, and presidential immunity, Columbia Law School faculty experts Gillian Metzger, Edward R. Morrison, and Thomas P. Schmidt discussed important U.S. Supreme Court decisions from the 2023–2024 term in the first Lawyers, Community, and Impact (LCI) event of the academic year, held on September 18.
Introduced by Daniel Abebe, Dean and Lucy G. Moses Professor of Law, and moderated by Benjamin Liebman, vice dean for intellectual life and Robert L. Lieff Professor of Law, the session covered rulings that overturned Chevron deference, threw out the Purdue Pharma bankruptcy settlement, and granted presidents limited immunity for their official acts.
Dean Abebe noted that it is traditional for the first LCI session of the fall semester to cover Supreme Court decisions that were issued at the end of the previous term, during the Law School’s summer break.
“One of the characteristics that drew me to Columbia Law School—perhaps one of the things that also drew you here as well—was the opportunity to be in a community of scholars who are not only among the world’s leading legal thinkers but are also deeply connected to the issues of today,” Dean Abebe said. “After almost every court ruling, there is some commentary from members of the Columbia Law faculty—including members of today’s panel—that reliably play a central role in shaping not only the legal discourse but the national debate about many of these issues.”
Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo
Gillian Metzger, Harlan Fiske Stone Professor of Constitutional Law, discussed Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, the case that overturned the 40-year-old Chevron doctrine, which says courts should defer to an administrative agency’s interpretation of the statute it administers. Metzger noted that the opinion, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, was a “significant” rejection of stare decisis and rejected Chevron deference not on constitutional grounds but for violating the 1946 Administrative Procedure Act—an idea that until recently had not had much currency, she said. Though the opinion does allow for agency interpretations to be upheld on other grounds, “the big question about Loper Bright is what’s the impact going to be? How many agency interpretations are now going to fall? Are we still going to have deference of any kind?” Metzger said. The end of Chevron also means the end of its protections against “politicization” when judicial review is affected by “the ideology of the judges reviewing the particularly liberal or conservative agency decision.” The courts will also lose “flexibility,” she added. “One of the main things that … Chevron [deference] … gave was the ability for agencies to change their mind. That’s really what Loper Bright and a lot of the conservatives [who brought the case] were reacting against, was this idea that law could change.”
Securities and Exchange Commission v. Jarkesy
Metzger also said that the decision in Securities and Exchange Commission v. Jarkesy—in which the court ruled that the SEC’s use of administrative tribunals to bring securities fraud claims seeking civil penalties violated the constitutional right to a jury trial—could foretell “a significant contraction in a basic administrative tool.” The extent of the ruling remains unclear, Metzger said: Would it cover “any determination of a civil penalty outside of an Article III court? That would be a very, very big deal.”
Harrington v. Purdue Pharma
Harrington v. Purdue Pharma is also a decision in which the court seeks to “limit the power of nonjudicial actors to do the work of the judiciary,” said Edward R. Morrison, Charles Evans Gerber Professor of Law. The Supreme Court blocked a bankruptcy plan for the maker of the opioid OxyContin in which the Sackler family, who had owned the company, would have paid billions of dollars to hundreds of thousands of people affected by opioid addiction. The Sacklers would have been shielded from lawsuits even though they were not themselves in bankruptcy. The court ruled that the U.S. Bankruptcy Court did not have statutory authority to approve the plan for parties not in bankruptcy. Bankruptcy Court is not an Article III court, Morrison noted, but functions more akin to a federal agency.
Only bankruptcy proceedings can bring together all claimants in a case with so many victims, Morrison said. The Supreme Court’s decision “eliminates a tool that was increasingly used to handle mass tort litigation.” He noted that a settlement with third-party liability protection was also used in sexual abuse cases involving the Boy Scouts of America, for example.
“The Supreme Court is unwilling to admit that in a world where civil procedure fails our tort victims, bankruptcy was filling the void,” Morrison said. “It’s a decision that makes the world a worse place.”
Trump v. Anderson and Trump v. United States
Associate Professor of Law Thomas P. Schmidt commented on decisions to keep former President Donald Trump on the primary ballot in Colorado in Trump v. Anderson and to grant presidents presumptive immunity for official acts in Trump v. United States.
In the ballot case, which turned on the 14th Amendment provision that participating in insurrection disqualifies a candidate for public office, the court said that states do not have the power to disqualify those seeking federal office. But the court split on whether enforcement should occur solely through congressional legislation. The unsigned per curiam opinion was joined in full by five justices.
“Given how unclear the opinion is on the role of Congress,” Schmidt said, “I’m not sure exactly what was achieved” by the sacrifice of unanimity.
The court also split on the question of presidential immunity, leading to a dissent from Justice Sonia Sotomayor that “in every use of official power, the president is now a king above the law.”
The immunity case raises the possibility that presidents could be shielded from injunctive relief for their actions—a more common form of accountability than criminal prosecution, Schmidt said. He cited Mississippi v. Johnson, a Reconstruction-era case in which the Supreme Court said it had no ability to enjoin the president in the performance of his official duties. “One possibility … is that you could see a bit of a renaissance of this case. And if that happens, I think it would probably be a greater threat to the rule of law and constitutionalism than the Trump decision itself.”
The Trump decision nonetheless does significant symbolic harm to constitutionalism, Schmidt said. The most basic premise of constitutional law is that “you could put the state under law, … not just the individual. And the president, more than any other officer of government, embodies the state and the power of the state. So a decision like this blows a hole in that basic aspiration of constitutionalism.”
About Lawyers, Community, and Impact: Launched in 2016, the series invites Columbia Law experts to talk about the most pressing issues of our time and brings deeper context and perspective to the work Columbia Law community members do both inside and outside the classroom.