There’s a long history of presidents trying to lobby the Supreme Court to rule on their behalf, and Franklin Roosevelt famously tried—and failed—to pack the court with additional members when the original nine invalidated parts of the New Deal. Obama himself has clashed repeatedly with the Court during his tenure. In 2010, he criticized its 5-4 decision in the Citizens United campaign-finance case during the State of the Union, while the justices sat directly in front of him (prompting Samuel Alito shake his hand and mouth, “no”). Two years later, he sharply warned the Court not to rule against his healthcare law the first time around. “I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress,” Obama said then.

Yet there’s less evidence that even the most persuasive use of the bully pulpit can sway the justices. “Would it help or hurt? I can’t imagine it’ll make any difference, and I can’t imagine he thinks it’ll make any difference,” said Charles Fried, the Harvard law professor who argued cases before the court as Ronald Reagan’s solicitor general. (Fried has weighed in on the Obama administration’s side in King v. Burwell.)