Since Donald Trump’s nominee Amy Coney Barrett became the seventh Supreme Court justice to be raised a Catholic, the court has, as expected, made a tilt to the right. But a veteran observer argues that in several important cases a fragile consensus has been maintained

On 1 July, the United States Supreme Court handed down the last two major decisions of its 2020-21 term – “handed down” in the time of Covid-19 meaning that the rulings were posted on the court’s website rather than announced from the bench. In contrast to several rulings this term in which justices appointed by Democratic and Republican presidents found sometimes surprising common ground in controversial cases – including one pitting religious liberty against gay rights – the two decisions broke down along partisan and ideological lines.

In a particularly stark schism, six Republican-appointed justices upheld restrictions on voting in the state of Arizona that the three Democratic appointees portrayed as an attack on the Voting Rights Act, a landmark civil rights law that Democrats in Congress have vowed to reinvigorate. In the other decision, the six Republican appointees ruled that the attorney general of California couldn’t demand the names of major donors to conservative (and other) non-profit organisations.