Each year, Supreme Court reporters and legal pundits devise a “theme” for the term just ended. They try to connect disparate cases into a coherent narrative about, for example, “the court’s turn to the Left,” the “triumph of minimalism,” or even its “libertarian moment.” Such trendspotting is mainly an artificial exercise driven by the vagaries of the docket; it’s not like the justices suddenly decide to make ideological shifts or alter jurisprudential approaches.



This term, however, confirmed a very real phenomenon: the Obama administration, by historical standards, has done exceedingly poorly before the Supreme Court. While this conclusion may seem counterintuitive given the term’s liberal victories on abortion and affirmative action—or previous terms’ rulings upholding Obamacare—the statistics are staggering.
This past term, the federal government won 13 cases and lost 14. Such mediocrity may seem surprising, but the 48 percent win rate is actually the Obama Justice Department’s third-best result. The administration’s best term was 2013-2014, when it went 11-9 (55 percent), while its worst record of 3-9 (25 percent) came in the abbreviated 2008-2009 term—counting only cases argued after the January 2009 inauguration.