Politico reports:

Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson launched another broadside Thursday, warning that her colleagues’ handling of the court’s emergency docket risks an “enormously disruptive and potentially corrosive effect” on the federal judiciary.

Jackson argued that the high court’s willingness to grant emergency relief in cases at their earliest stages threatens to upset the legal system’s order of operations and transform the Supreme Court’s role.

“Like many exceptions, there is a risk that they’ll swallow the rule,” Jackson said during a speech to students and faculty at the University of the District of Columbia School of Law. “If we’re not careful, the emergency docket can and will become an end-run around the standard review process.”

Over the past year and a half, there has been no more prolific user of the Supreme Court’s emergency docket than the Trump administration, which has produced an impressive win rate of about 80% on such appeals.

The victories have allowed Trump to implement much of his policy agenda, by firing hundreds of thousands of federal employees, cancelling billions of dollars in federal grants and contracts, and ending legal status for millions of immigrants.

Jackson was circumspect Thursday in how she addressed the government’s lopsided record. Nevertheless, it was clear that the reforms Jackson suggested would have meant stormier seas for the administration’s emergency appeals.

Jackson said the justices should begin their consideration of such appeals by asking whether the harms facing each side are truly urgent and severe. Only then would the justices consider the parties’ relative chance of prevailing on their legal arguments. She argued that approach would mean fewer successful emergency appeals, returning that docket to the sleepier status it had before the last decade or so. [Continue reading…]