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"Political activists tend to score Donald Trump's win-loss rate like a football match. Team Trump cheers his wins and boos his losses, and Team Anti-Trump does the opposite. That is not the way Supreme Court decisions work. If we look carefully at the Court's decisions, the pattern is that the President prevails when the question is whether he has control over the executive bureaucracy; these rulings will work to the benefit of future Democratic presidents no less than Mr. Trump. He (like his predecessor) tends to lose when the executive branch asserts new substantive regulatory authority based on vague and ambiguous language in statutes that have not been interpreted that way in the past. The tariff case is the leading example. As to the interim, or "shadow" docket, the win-lose figures are distorted by the fact that plaintiffs choose the court to sue in, giving the challengers to presidential action (whether Republican or Democrat) a significant advantage, but the Solicitor General chooses which cases to take to the High Court on an emergency basis. It is no wonder that there are many lower court decisions against Trump, and few Supreme Court decisions against him in the emergency docket."

Michael McConnell