In the Supreme Court term that began in October 2025, the justices delivered major decisions in cases ranging from voting rights to citizenship to presidential power. The Conversation’s Politics and Legal Affairs Editor, Naomi Schalit, spoke with Dickinson College President John Jones, a former federal judge, about the court’s session.

They focused on two recent decisions: birthright citizenship, which the justices affirmed, and a Mississippi state law that allows mail ballots postmarked by Election Day to be received up to five days later and still be counted, which national and state Republican parties challenged and lost.

Schalit: Two of the court’s conservatives, Chief Justice John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett, joined the three liberals in saying that the Mississippi mail-in ballots law did not violate federal law and could stand. What do you make of this ruling?

Jones: The majority opinion, written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, is really emblematic of an emerging pragmatic conservatism that she and the chief justice are showing, which is heartening to see, regardless of whether you agree with their judicial philosophy. Justice Barrett properly cast the question not as one of constitutional import but merely as an interpretation of Congress’ laws that mandate that federal elections be held on the same day. Notably those laws are silent on the issue of when ballots must be received, which has been left to individual states to regulate.

Justice Barrett actually sounded kind of sharp, almost scolding, in the opinion in her criticism of the assertions made by the plaintiffs and some of the justices in the minority. Is that tone typical?

I perceive an increase in what I would characterize as sort of judicial invective among the members of this court. I don’t love that, but sometimes you have to get your elbows up to make a strong point when you’re on an appellate court.

I suspect one of her problems was the sheer illogic of the dissent’s parade of possible horribles if........

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