The Power of the Supreme Court's Shadow Docket

In a recent ruling allowing the Trump administration to disassemble the Department of Education and fire nearly 1,400 federal workers, the Supreme Court did not answer a straightforward question: Why? In a separate ruling empowering the Trump administration to ban transgender troops from the military, at least for now, the Court once more offered no explanation. And when a majority of justices cleared the way for noncitizens to be deported to countries they aren’t from, such as South Sudan, their rationale was elusive yet again.

“There’s something taunting, almost bullying, about this lack of reasoning, as if the conservative supermajority is saying to the country: You don’t even deserve an explanation,” Quinta Jurecic, an Atlantic staff writer who covers America’s legal system, recently wrote. Though the justices are well within their rights to offer little to no explanation for emergency rulings through their “shadow docket,” they’ve begun issuing far more decisions this way in recent years, to the concern of legal experts. I spoke with Quinta to ask her about the power of the shadow docket and how the Supreme Court has responded to President Donald Trump’s policies.

Stephanie Bai: How would you characterize the Court’s approach to the Trump presidency?

Quinta Jurecic: The Court has definitely been solicitous of the administration, let’s say that. This pattern has been most visible on the Court’s emergency docket, also called the “shadow docket.” When a case is being litigated, often there’ll be this question of whether or not a policy should be implemented while litigation is continuing. A district court can block the policy from going into effect, and then the government can go to higher courts to try to get that block overturned. That will reach the Supreme Court on the shadow docket.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/power-supreme-court-shadow-docket-220300296.html