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Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States

  1.   This section is not meant to exhaustively engage every criticism or defense advanced about the Court’s procedures in its issuance of emergency orders. We have focused on especially salient critiques—and responses to those critiques—that have been developed by scholars and practitioners, and more recently the Justices themselves, over the past few years.
  2.   Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson, 141 S. Ct. 2494 (2021).
  3.   E.g., Biden v. Texas, No. 21A21, slip op. at 1 (U.S. Aug. 24, 2021) (mem.); Dep’t of Homeland Sec. v. New York, 140 S. Ct. 599 (2020) (mem.).
  4.   E.g., West Virginia v. EPA, 136 S. Ct. 1000 (2016) (mem.).
  5.   Alabama Ass’n of Realtors v. Dep’t of Health & Human Servs., No. 21A23, slip op. at 1 (U.S. Aug. 26, 2021) (per curiam); Alabama Ass’n of Realtors v. Dep’t of Health & Human Servs., No. 20A169, slip op. at 1 (U.S. June 29, 2021) (mem.); Chrysafis v. Marks, No. 21A8, slip op. at 1 (U.S. Aug. 12, 2021) (mem.).
  6.   141 S. Ct. 2494 (2021).
  7.   See Ross v. Nat’l Urban League, 141 S. Ct. 18 (2020) (mem.).
  8.   See Merrill v. People First of Ala., 141 S. Ct. 190 (2020) (mem.); Andino v. Middleton, 141 S. Ct. 9 (2020) (mem.); Republican Nat’l Comm. v. Democratic Nat’l Comm., 140 S. Ct. 1205 (2020) (mem.).
  9.   See Barnes v. Ahlman, 140 S. Ct. 2620 (2020) (mem.).
  10.   See, e.g., Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo, 141 S. Ct. 63 (2020) (per curiam); Tandon v. Newsom, 141 S. Ct. 1294 (2021) (per curiam).
  11.   Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States 13 (July 20, 2021) (written testimony of Sharon McGowan, Lambda Legal), https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/McGowan-Testimony.pdf (describing how although the Court later denied cert in a Virginia school board’s effort to reverse a lower court injunction allowing a transgender student to use the boys’ bathroom, the Supreme Court’s initial stay in the case, Gloucester Cty. Sch. Bd. v. G.G. ex rel. Grimm, 136 S. Ct. 2442 (2016) (mem.), had the effect of barring Gavin Grimm from “using the boys’ restroom along with all the other boys throughout his last year of high school”).
  12.   Vladeck Testimony, supra note 8, at 7.
  13.   Steve Vladeck (@steve_vladeck), Twitter (Sept. 5, 2021 1:27 PM), https://mobile.twitter.com/steve_vladeck/status/1434568812045742086.
  14.   In the 2020 Term, the Court decided fewer than 70 merits cases, below its average over the past 15 years. See Kalvis Golde, In Barrett’s First Term, Conservative Majority Is Dominant but Divided, SCOTUSBlog (July 2, 2021, 6:37 PM), https://www.scotusblog.com/2021/07/in-barretts-first-term-conservative-majority-is-dominant-but-divided; SCOTUSBlog, Stat Pack for the Supreme Court’s 2020–21 Term 18 (2021), https://www.scotusblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Final-Stat-Pack-07.02.2021.pdf. The merits docket for the 2019 Term contained the lowest number of cases since the Civil War. Adam Feldman, Empirical SCOTUS: Something We Haven’t Seen in the Supreme Court Since the Civil War, SCOTUSBlog (Apr. 16, 2020, 5:22 PM), https://www.scotusblog.com/2020/04/empirical-scotus-something-we-havent-seen-in-the-supreme-court-since-the-civil-war; see SCOTUSBlog, Final Stat Pack for October Term 2019, at 1 (2020), https://www.scotusblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Final-Statpack-7.20.2020.pdf.
  15.   Vladeck Testimony, supra note 8, at 7–8.
  16.   Bray Testimony, supra note 7, at 5–7 (discussing such injunctions and their relationship to the shadow docket).
  17.   See Alito, “The Emergency Docket,” supra note 10.
  18.   As an example of the latter point, Professor Vladeck argues that a majority of the Justices believe that state and federal governments are irreparably harmed when their actions are enjoined by a lower court and suggests that this is a relatively new development. Vladeck Testimony, supra note 8, at 14.
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