\n<\/p>\n
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.<\/p>\n
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\u2019t from, such as South Sudan, their rationale was elusive yet again.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s something taunting, almost bullying, about this lack of reasoning, as if the conservative supermajority is saying to the country: You don\u2019t even deserve an explanation,\u201d Quinta Jurecic, an Atlantic staff writer who covers America\u2019s legal system, recently wrote. Though the justices are well within their rights to offer little to no explanation for emergency rulings through their \u201cshadow docket,\u201d they\u2019ve 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\u2019s policies.<\/p>\n
Stephanie Bai: How would you characterize the Court\u2019s approach to the Trump presidency?<\/p>\n
Quinta Jurecic: The Court has definitely been solicitous of the administration, let\u2019s say that. This pattern has been most visible on the Court\u2019s emergency docket, also called the \u201cshadow docket.\u201d When a case is being litigated, often there\u2019ll 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.<\/p>\n
The Trump administration has been very aggressive in running straight to the Supreme Court\u2019s shadow docket to overturn lower courts\u2019 blocks on their policies, and the Court has been surprisingly willing to take the administration up on that. According to some numbers tabulated by Steve Vladeck, a law professor at Georgetown, the Court has issued 15 rulings since early April granting the Trump administration emergency relief. In seven of them, the justices didn\u2019t provide any explanation at all for their decision, including in their recent ruling allowing the administration to dismantle the Department of Education.<\/p>\n
Stephanie: What are the implications of the Supreme Court\u2019s more frequent use of the shadow docket in recent years?<\/p>\n
Quinta: If you imagine a typical Supreme Court case, what happens is that somebody sues, the case goes to the district court, they appeal, it goes to an appeals court, then only at the very end of the road does it reach the Supreme Court. And that can take years.<\/p>\n
Because the Supreme Court is agreeing to hear these cases on its shadow docket, it\u2019s stepping in before the underlying legal question is actually resolved. It\u2019s allowing that policy to go into effect while the litigation continues. What is so strange about this dynamic is that it means that, for example, Trump is going to be able to fire roughly 40 percent of the workers at the Education Department before the courts have even determined whether he has the legal authority to do so.<\/p>\n
Stephanie: It\u2019s not hard to understand why the Trump administration keeps rushing cases to the Supreme Court, when it keeps winning. But why does the Court itself seem to prefer this approach?<\/p>\n
Quinta: That\u2019s a question that a lot of us who study courts and the law are asking ourselves. I think there is a decent argument that they\u2019re kind of encouraging the Trump administration to keep coming to them because they\u2019re so willing to take up these cases, instead of sending a signal that the government should slow down. Maybe they just want the government to win. Another possibility is that the Court is more conservative than a lot of the lower courts, so the conservative justices might feel like the lower courts aren\u2019t getting it right. It\u2019s difficult to say because the justices aren\u2019t explaining their reasoning in many cases. Or they explain it in the broadest of strokes.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been striking not only that the Court has been willing to give the Trump administration so many wins, but that it hasn\u2019t even been bothering to explain itself. We\u2019re at a moment where there is a lot of concern about the Supreme Court being politicized and how that affects the Court\u2019s legitimacy. You would think that the justices would want to present their reasoning in a way that would make clear that they were acting according to legal principles rather than just handing the Republican Party a win. The puzzle is: Why are the conservative justices taking this approach? Do they not realize the effect that it has? Do they not care?<\/p>\n
Stephanie: Trump has not been shy about his disdain for the American legal system. But is there a risk that the Supreme Court\u2019s legitimacy could also be undermined by its own actions?<\/p>\n
Quinta: So far, Trump has mostly confined his attacks to lower courts. He\u2019s gone after the Supreme Court occasionally when they handed down a ruling that he didn\u2019t like, especially in his first term, but now they\u2019re handing him all of these victories. As you say, this sets up a dangerous situation for the Court, even though the conservative supermajority seems very confident that the Court will be able to maintain its power.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m reminded of the Twitter joke about the woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People\u2019s Faces Party and is surprised when her face is eaten by a leopard. Trump is going after all of the other courts. Do the justices really think that he\u2019s not going to turn on them? And once you have already damaged your own legitimacy with the public because you appear to have become a political actor, what support do you have left?<\/p>\n
Related:<\/p>\n
\nHere are three new stories from The Atlantic:<\/strong><\/p>\n Today\u2019s News<\/strong><\/p>\n Dispatches<\/strong><\/p>\n Explore all of our newsletters here.<\/em><\/p>\n Evening Read<\/strong><\/p>\n Netflix<\/p>\n Romance On-Screen Has Never Been Colder. Maybe That\u2019s Just Truthful.<\/p>\n By Sophie Gilbert<\/p>\n These are hard times to be a romantic, especially on Netflix. Two years ago, on a New Yorker podcast lamenting the modern state of the rom-com, Alexandra Schwartz noted that the most crucial quality for any romance is this: \u201cYou have to believe that these two people want to be together, and you have to buy in.\u201d On this front, Too Much barely even tries \u2026 Initially, this set my teeth on edge\u2014two characters with seemingly little interest in each other being paired off with the chaotic insistence of a child making her soft toys kiss. But the more I\u2019ve come back to the show, the more its slack, unromantic approach to love looks intentional.<\/p>\n Read the full article.<\/p>\n More From The Atlantic<\/em><\/p>\n Culture Break<\/p>\n Ronald Dumont \/ Daily Express \/ Getty<\/p>\n Take a look. These are some weird, wonderful photos from the 20th century, depicting stunt diving, unusual war training, giant household objects, and much more.<\/p>\n Read. \u201cBuying Shrimp at Bennetts Point,\u201d a poem by Roey Leonardi:<\/p>\n \u201cMy father says to pick a beer. \/ Outside, two men in yellow coats \/ hose mud from a reef of oysters\u201d<\/p>\n Play our daily crossword.<\/p>\n When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting <\/em>The Atlantic.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. In a recent ruling allowing the Trump administration to disassemble the Department of Education and fire nearly 1,400 federal<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11243,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[569,4544,1664,3947,159],"class_list":{"0":"post-11242","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-courts","9":"tag-docket","10":"tag-power","11":"tag-shadow","12":"tag-supreme"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11242\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n