The 5th Circuit is staking out a claim to be America’s most dangerous court

The Supreme Court is, no doubt, the nation’s most powerful court. But the 5th Circuit, the federal appeals court that covers Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, is staking out a claim to be the most dangerous — the least wedded to respecting precedent or following an orderly judicial process.

The 5th is arguably the most conservative among the country’s dozen appeals courts. It inclined in that direction even before President Donald Trump managed to install six nominees. And they constitute quite a bunch: Stuart Kyle Duncan, who said the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling establishing a right to same-sex marriage “imperils civic peace” and “raises a question about the legitimacy of the court.” Cory Wilson, who tweeted about Hillary Clinton using the hashtag #CrookedHillary, called the Affordable Care Act “illegitimate” and said he supported overturning Roe v. Wade. James C. Ho, who issued a concurring opinion lamenting the “moral tragedy of abortion.”

How conservative is the court, where 12 of 17 active judges were named by Republican presidents? “As conservative a federal appeals court as any of us have seen in our lifetimes,” says Stephen I. Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas, noting that even as the circuit’s conservatives tend toward the extreme end of the spectrum, its liberals aren’t all that liberal.

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