I am happy to share this guest post from Seth Chandler, the Foundation Professor of Law at the University of Houston Law Center. I think the AI gets some things quite right and some things quite wrong. Then again, my own track record of predictions is not great, so perhaps GPT will soon beat me!
Trump v. CASA in an AI Crucible: An Experiment in Simulating Supreme Court Opinions
Last week, the Supreme Court heard arguments in Trump v. CASA, Inc., a case scrutinizing "universal injunctions" in the context of President Trump's controversial executive order on birthright citizenship. This prompted me to conduct a novel experiment: could a large language model, given only the argument transcript and its background knowledge, realistically simulate the forthcoming Supreme Court opinions? I tasked an AI with predicting each justice's vote, drafting abridged versions of the various opinions, and even considering the strategic interplay between justices—and the output was surprisingly coherent.
Here's the outcome as reported by a simulated Linda Greenhouse (leading American legal journalist).
In a sharply divided 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court significantly curtailed the power of federal courts to issue "universal" or "nationwide" injunctions, a ruling with immediate and far-reaching consequences for a controversial executive order seeking to limit birthright citizenship. While stopping short, for now, of deciding the ultimate constitutionality of President Trump's order, the majority opinion, authored by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, effectively allows the administration to implement its policy for many, even as it keeps protections in place for the specific plaintiffs involved in the lawsuits.
The ruling, handed down in Trump v. CASA, Inc., represents a major victory for the executive branch in its efforts to rein in what it has long decried as judicial overreach by individual district judges halting federal policies across the entire country. Justice Barrett, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh, grounded the decision in Article III's "case-or-controversy" requirement, asserting that judicial relief must generally be confined to redressing the specific injuries of the plaintiffs before the court, not every person potentially affected by a policy.
The Court vacated the nationwide injunctions previously entered by three lower courts, which had barred enforcement of the executive order that aims to deny U.S. citizenship to children born in the U.S. if either parent is in the country unlawfully or on a temporary visa. The majority found that such broad relief was "legally and historically dubious" and an abuse of discretion, arguing that traditional equitable remedies authorized by the Judiciary Act of 1789 did not encompass injunctions benefiting non-parties in ordinary cases. However, the Court left a sliver of possibility for universal relief in "rare cases" where it is "necessary to fully redress a plaintiff's own injury," a standard it found was not met in this instance.
While the majority opinion recognized "serious questions about the executive order's constitutionality under the Fourteenth Amendment's Citizenship Clause," it deliberately sidestepped a definitive ruling on that "momentous question" at this preliminary stage. Instead, the focus remained narrowly on the scope of injunctive power. Justice Barrett emphasized that the decision was not a final adjudication of the merits and that the Court was prepared to address the underlying constitutional issue "expeditiously".
The decision effectively means the executive order can be implemented against newborns whose families are not part of the current lawsuits or residents of the plaintiff states (like New Jersey and Washington), for whom protections remain. This outcome, the majority acknowledged, means "some number of U.S.-born children will be denied recognition as citizens in the short term".
