The Supreme Court’s Common Sense Problem

A Cross-post from SCOTUSBlog

“Common sense” reasoning is becoming more common at the Supreme Court. The justices have explicitly relied on common sense to underwrite its holdings in several salient areas of law. And commentators are beginning to seize on that trend.

Some examples

Major questions and tariffs

The most striking recent example of the commonsense turn is the tariffs case, Learning Resources v. Trump. As one of us described the key facts last month:

[Learning Resources] featured not just debate over the major questions doctrine but also dozens of references to “common sense” or “commonsense,” even though the case featured a 6–3 lineup and seven sharply divergent opinions. Many of these uses of “common sense” did not reflect the plain meaning of statutory terms but instead represented controversial intuitions about the proper operation of government. … Remarkably, every justice in Learning Resources authored or joined a “common sense” opinion.

The jurist most skeptical of the “commonsense” turn was Justice Neil Gorsuch, whose concurrence forcefully criticized Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s quasi-canonical invocation of common sense in her own Biden v. Nebraska concurrence. As he put it, “if common sense really does go so far as to embrace a rule counseling ‘skepticism’ of claims by executive officials that Congress has granted them extraordinary powers, that is common sense in name only.” Gorsuch nonetheless joined the portion of the chief justice’s opinion that repeatedly invoked “common sense.”

Learning Resources thus illustrates not just the rise of common sense judging, but also the emergence of resistance to it.

Standing and Diamond Alternative Energy

In the 2025 decision in Diamond Alternative Energy v. EPA, in which the court held that fuel producers had standing to sue the EPA, Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s majority opinion repeatedly emphasized common sense.

Consider the following passage, which uses “commonsense” in four successive sentences:

In cases of [a certain] kind, this Court’s analysis of causation and redressability has recognized commonsense economic realities. When third party behavior is predictable, commonsense inferences may be drawn. Importantly, EPA agrees that “commonsense economic principles” can be useful when evaluating Article III standing. In this case, those commonsense economic principles support the fuel producers’ standing.

In dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson recognized the court’s distinctively commonsensical mode of argument and responded in part by challenging it:

I have no quarrel with relying on common sense as a general matter. But we should acknowledge that what counts as a “commonsense” inference to the Justices on this Court may not be viewed as such by others.

In total, “common sense” or “commonsense” appear over a dozen times in the Diamond Alternative Energy opinions.

The Second Amendment and Rahimi

In 2024’s United States v. Rahimi, in which the court upheld a federal law banning persons subject to a domestic-violence restraining order from possessing a gun, the chief justice’s majority opinion also invoked “common sense,” noting that certain practices “confirm what common sense suggests.”

That statement paired well with the court’s turn toward “principles” discernible from history, rather than specific historical analogues. In that vein, Barrett’s separate writing quoted one of her own lower court opinions: “History is consistent with common sense: it demonstrates that legislatures have the power to prohibit dangerous people from possessing guns.” (Though she did not explain which is doing the work – history, or common sense.)

Much has been written about the pliability of history and tradition in Second Amendment doctrine. But the other opinions in Rahimidemonstrate the pliability of common sense as well. Justice Sonia Sotomayor invoked commonsense, including by quoting Justice Stephen Breyer’s dissent in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. Had the court adopted a “rigid approach to [] historical inquiry,” she worried, it would have made it “‘nearly impossible to sustain common-sense regulations necessary to our Nation’s safety and security.’”

And Justice Clarence Thomas’ dissent used commonsense, too. “If self-defense is ‘the central component of the [Second Amendment] right,’ then common sense dictates that it matters whether you can defend yourself with a firearm anywhere, only at home, or nowhere.” (Left unanswered: whether a particular “sense” can truly be “common,” when it is conditioned on knowing a somewhat arcane point of constitutional law.)

More

Recent scholarship confirms that common sense reasoning is spreading throughout public law. A forthcoming article by Brian Murray addresses “Common Sense Constitutionalism and the Fourth Amendment.” A forthcoming article by William Aceves criticizes Kavanaugh’s invocation of “common sense” in Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo, as did a post by Jennifer Chacón. We understand that more common sense scholarship is in the pipeline.

Is “commonsense” judging good?

This commonsense turn is understandable. But ultimately, we think, problematic.

Part of the problem comes from the plasticity of assertions of common sense. In principle, “common sense” could refer to true consensus – a sense held commonly by all, across ideological and other boundaries. Universally held precepts are an important part of legal reasoning. Traditional legal principles like the absurdity canon and the “golden rule” employ them. Arguably forms of unwritten law such as natural law, general law, and customary law can also derive from various kinds of consensus – though these forms of law become much more controversial and of questionable authority the more contested the supposedly common ground.

But today’s common sense turn is not limited to true consensus. Rather the justices (like many other people) often invoke “common sense” when asserting controversial views. They may do so naively, because they erroneously believe that everyone agrees with them; or they might do it more tactically. As a rhetorical maneuver, invoking common sense has the advantage of distancing oneself from a complicated, highfalutin legal analysis. Rather than parsing subsections, multiprong tests, or obscure legal authorities, a lawyer or judge might try to cut through the muck by positing, “It’s just common sense that X, Y, and Z!” But if that common sense is controversial, not truly common, then the rhetorical maneuver amounts to a form of table-pounding rather than an argument.

For decades, adherents to textualism and other formalist methodologies fought to diminish legal maneuvers such as the use of legislative purpose, judicial creation of exceptions for special circumstances, and so on. They made arguments about rules, the perils of judicial discretion, the legal legitimacy of enacted texts, and more. Invocations of common sense allow a judge to soften these commitments without explicitly saying so – and perhaps without fully thinking through the nature of the softness.

Thus one can see the turn to commonsense as a feature of our ongoing legal realignment. Justices long associated with more rigid judicial philosophies are pivoting to more discretionary modes of decisionmaking. Or, more modestly, even if there is not a complete realignment one could see the common sense turn as reflecting the way various rigid doctrines had overextended themselvesthrough exaggerated rigidity and must be modestly trimmed back. Either way, common sense can seem attractive. It provides an unobtrusive cover for a retreat or realignment without coming to terms with what is going on.

In our view, commonsense judging is becoming too common. Even if judges should indeed have a good measure of common sense, and should use it sometimes, it has gone too far. Invocations of common sense have submerged important questions about legal interpretation – if textualism or standing doctrine need a nudge, it is probably time for the court to say so explicitly. The justices have obscured real disagreements with empty rhetoric, and as a result passed up opportunities to forge meaningful compromises.

The act of translating one’s own views (including common sense intuitions) into legal arguments can be difficult, in part because it is disciplining. When justices (or judges, clerks, lawyers ...) are tempted to invoke common sense, they should pause and reflect on what claim they really intend to make. An assertion of consensus? (And if so, is it really true?) A tweak of a too-rigid doctrine? (And if so, what tweak, and with what possible downstream consequences?) A distracting bluster? (And if so, distracting from what?)

And when all of us hear unconvincing assertions of common sense, we can gently push back. “Have you thought about how I might think about this?”, one might ask. “And if we disagree, what legal rule supports your sense over mine?”

Cross-posted from SCOTUSBlog.