The Supreme Court can affect a lot by seemingly doing little.
Traditionally, the process of getting an opinion from the U.S. Supreme Court takes months and those rulings are often narrowly tailored. Emergency orders, especially during the court’s summer break, revolve around specific issues, like individual death penalty cases. But that pattern has changed in recent years with decisions coming outside the court’s normal procedures. That has been especially true in the past two weeks. Since Aug.24, that truncated process known as the shadow docket has moved at astronomical speed, producing decisions related to immigration, COVID-19 and evictions and, most recently, abortion. Those three decisions, with the conservative wing of the court in the majority, have the potential to affect millions of people, in a fraction of the time and outside the normal scrutiny signed opinions can bring. “My memory is, typically, if the Supreme Court was acting in July and August, it was really that quintessential emergency appeal, dealing with something like a death penalty situation. It wasn’t like: What is immigration law going to be in our country? It wasn’t: Will tenants have certain rights? It wasn’t the big substantive questions,” said Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School. Participants petition the court to hear cases. If accepted, there are oral arguments before the justices, although during the coronavirus era that has meant via telephone. Before this happens, a case usually has gone through a full review and appeal in lower courts. Those deliberations are part of the material the justices reference.
