Justice Kavanaugh: Supreme Court's slow start a coincidence

Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh says the public shouldn’t read anything into the high court’s historically slow start to releasing opinions.

Every year the justices begin hearing cases in October and generally finish their work by the end of June before going on a summer break. This term, however, they went more than three months without resolving any cases in which they heard arguments. On Monday, the justices finally announced a unanimous decision in one case and dismissed another.

Some observers wondered whether the slow pace could be the result of a variety of factors: a change in the court’s makeup with the addition of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, less consensus on a deeply divided bench or the consequences of last term’s leak of a draft opinion in the case that overturned a half-century of abortion rights.