From the legality of many of President Donald Trump's sweeping tariffs to the firing of independent agency members and birthright citizenship, the nation's highest court, which began its new term yesterday, has some constitutional scholars watching for rulings that could reign in the president's expansion of executive power.

UK law professor Joshua Douglas comes back to give us a primer on some key cases to watch.

There are a lot of really significant cases that are going to tell us the scope of how much the Supreme Court is going to be a check on the executive.

We're seeing the court already issue various orders in its so-called emergency docket.

Some people refer to it as the shadow docket.

These are that mean they're basically cases that where the losing party at the lower court asks for an emergency decision, an emergency appeal.

They don't have full briefing.

They don't have oral arguments like in the regular course of cases.

And the court didn't used to use this very much, didn't used to entertain these kinds of appeals.

But more and more has been issuing decisions, typically putting a lower court decision on hold, which has the effect in the cases involving Trump have has the effect of in most of these cases, allowing Trump to take the action that he's seeking while the court says, but we're going to decide later on the full substance of this and the full legality or constitutionality of the action.

So what we saw over the summer was the court, in a numerous decisions put, lower court decisions on hold and say, we're going to decide these later.

And, well, later is now for this, this new term.

And you have some particular interest in some cases that will be heard concerning voting rights.

Tell us about this.

Yeah.

Well, so the biggest case with respect to voting rights is about Louisiana.

This is a case about redistricting the way we draw district lines.

And what's kind of crazy is that we're still litigating the maps that were drawn after the 2020, 2021 census.

And, states have to redraw their lines every ten years to ensure population equality, to ensure that the districts have roughly the same number of people.

But there are other rules involved, particularly with respect to race and the current doctrine, essentially the kind of case law essentially, that is, that states have to think about race.

Some if there's a significant minority population, like in Louisiana, but you can't think about race too much.

And so what happened is in Louisiana, they have six congressional districts with a population that's about 33% racial minority.

And only one of those six districts had a majority of people that were of a minority race.

And my majority people who are black.

But with six districts, you would think, and 33% of the population, maybe it should be closer to two.

And so there was a lawsuit under the Voting Rights Act, section two of the Voting Rights Act, which said, essentially, you've got to have two seats instead of just one that are majority black.

The lower courts agreed.

Louisiana drew a map that was to majority black districts while still trying to preserve the, Partizan representation.

And then some white plaintiffs sued and said, well, hold up.

You thought about race too much in drawing the lines and making sure that you had two majority black districts.

And so that's the challenge facing the court right now.

Is did Louisiana think about race too much in drawing the lines?

And if it was for us to think about race to comply with the Voting Rights Act, does that make the Voting Rights Act itself unconstitutional?

Now, the court heard the case last term.

And then, towards the end of the term, it said, we're going to rehear it with new briefing and new argument on that bigger constitutional question.

Is section two of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional?

And this is widespread beyond just implications for Louisiana?

This can have major implications, really.

I mean, I think, you know, there's so many states that have maps that are drawn under the auspices of section two of the Voting Rights Act, where we're seeing that you have to have a certain amount of minority representation, because here's what map drivers will sometimes do, because in many states, minorities tend to live in the same geographic area.

They'll draw the lines to pack as many minority members into one district, so that their super majority in one district and have zero influence in the rest of the state, and section two has said, or the court's interpretation of section two has said, that that's often unlawful when you could draw a map that has stronger minority representation.

So maps in Alabama and Florida, in North Carolina all have this kind of concern.

And even here in Kentucky, you know, there's some talk about should the Republicans try to redraw the lines, like many other states are doing in this mid-decade redistricting and, take away the one Democratic controlled seat right now in Louisville?

Right.

But the problem for the state is that it might face a section two Voting Rights Act lawsuit if it does that, because Louisville obviously is a large minority population, while section two goes out the door, there's perhaps not as much of a legal constraint on at least that aspect of redrawing the lines.

And this is not about, redrawing district lines in, in a, in mid-cycle, as I would say.

Yeah, this this case out of Louisiana is not.

But I think it has implications not only for future lawsuits, but also for what states might try to do, knowing that there could be a lawsuit, you know, pending or brought against it.

So, you know, laws aren't just about the lawsuits that are broad.

They're about deterring action because of the potential of a lawsuit that might come down the pike.

Professor Douglas cast this term of Scotus as a test of the separation of powers in terms of presidential authority and the guardrails for democracy.