Editor’s note: The Supreme court removed Trump v. International Refugee Assistance Project and Trump v. Hawaii from the oral argument calendar on Sept. 25, pending further order of the court. By Oct. 5, lawyers are to submit briefs addressing the possible effects of President Donald Trump’s new travel ban proclamation, issued Sept. 24, which replaced a revised travel ban from March. The court asked the parties to address whether the new proclamation, as well as other developments, might render the cases moot.

When the U.S. Supreme Court took the bench for the final time of the 2016-17 term in late June, the justices had a few surprises up their sleeves.

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Pamela S. Karlan, a law professor and the co-director of the Supreme Court Litigation Clinic at Stanford University, says that President Trump has had two arguably significant achievements in his early months in office: the confirmation of Justice Gorsuch and the issuance of his executive order on immigration.

“And now we have ‘the convergence of the twain,’ ” she says, referring to Thomas Hardy’s 1915 poem about the fateful encounter between the Titanic and an iceberg.

Karlan, who worked for a time in the Obama Justice Department, continues: “Here, two things are going to be tested: One is the constitutionality of the travel ban itself. And we’re going to see early on about the stripes of Justice Gorsuch.”

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