This weekend I find myself in Louisville, Kentucky for Judge Boggs's clerk reunion. I clerked here back in 2011-12, and the last reunion was in June 2016. In many ways, these three points in time were inflection points for the conservative legal movement, and for my role in that process.
In June 2012, as I wound down my clerkship, the Supreme Court decided NFIB v. Sebelius. At the time, I was already writing my first book on the Obamacare litigation. The Chief Justice, and his saving construction, signaled to many conservatives that the Roberts Court was not what they thought it was. We chanted "No more Souters," but instead, we got a Roberts. In hindsight, all the signs were there--Roberts had more red flags than a Soviet parade. But NFIB crystalized the Chief's priorities. About a month later, right after my last sitting, I began teaching at the South Texas College of Law.
Fast-forward to February 2016. I was still an untenured professor, and hadn't been protested yet. My work was read in certain circles, but my influence was admittedly limited. Justice Scalia died, and Senate Republicans refused to even hold a hearing on whoever the President nominated. June 2016 represented one of the worst months for conservatives on the Supreme Court in recent memory. Whole Woman's Health, Fisher II, a 4-4 in Texas v. U.S., a punt in Zubik v. Burwell, and so on. Things looked bleak. Then, to (almost) everyone's surprise, Trump won. And in rapid succession, we got Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett.
