US Edition
What the New York Times Got Wrong – and Right – About the Emergency Docket
Leaked internal memos show Roberts pressed the court to act before appellate review, citing up to $480 billion in potential costs.
- The New York Times published internal correspondence last week revealing that Chief Justice John Roberts pressured the Supreme Court to grant an emergency stay against President Barack Obama's Clean Power Plan in 2016.
- Issued without a formal opinion, the 5-4 order in February 2016 marked the birth of the modern 'shadow docket,' halting the environmental rule before the U.S. Court of Appeals could review its legal merits.
- Citing industry-backed reports, Roberts claimed the Clean Power Plan would cost $480 billion, asserting that allowing the regulation to proceed would cause 'irreparable harm' to the energy sector.
- The stay effectively blocked the plan, which required states to cut carbon emissions 32% by 2030; the Trump administration later benefited from the Court's expanded use of emergency orders for high-stakes policy decisions.
- Contradicting his 2005 confirmation promise to 'call balls and strikes,' documents suggest Roberts prioritized presidential politics over standard judicial procedures when intervening in the case.
12 Articles
12 Articles
Stephanie Barclay on "The Emergency Docket’s Mistaken Birthday"
Was the Clean Power Plan the first executive branch action halted by Supreme Court order on the "shadow docket"? Was it even the first Obama Administration action stopped in this way? Over at SCOTUSBlog, Stephanie Barclay explains why the answer is "no." Her piece begins: Last Saturday, the New York Times published a trove of internal Supreme Court memoranda from February 2016 and declared that the five-day deliberation over President Barack Oba…
Chief Justice John Roberts Sounds a Lot Like the Fossil Fuel Lobby
Over the weekend, the New York Times published a fairly explosive investigation into the birth of the Supreme Court’s modern shadow docket. Traditionally used for procedural decision-making, the shadow docket has, over the last several years, acted as a back door for SCOTUS to make key policy decisions more or less on the fly—or at least without spending months or years considering briefs and oral arguments and writing out signed and detailed op…
John Roberts torn apart for power grab exposed in leaked memos
Last week, internal memos from an obscure 2016 Supreme Court decision were leaked by The New York Times, showing shocking revelations about Chief Justice John Roberts, who frequently plays a public role as a non-partisan justice, but behind the scenes, he's being exposed for his right-leaning slant. In an analysis about it on Tuesday, Slate's Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern explained that this ruling is what began the "shadow docket."Alter…
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Bias Distribution
- 64% of the sources lean Left
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