Civics: Chief Justice Roberts Broke The Fourth Wall in Cook
This unusual opinion suggests something happened behind the scenes over the past ten months.
For years, Justice Kagan was overtly critical of the Supreme Court’s approach to emergency applications. In written dissents and public speeches, Kagan fed into the nefarious “shadow docket” narrative. She may as well have blurbed Steve Vladeck’s book. Yet, I’ve noticed over the past year or so that rhetoric from Justice Kagan has faded. Indeed, Kagan testified that she would rather “not now . . . call it the shadow docket . . . because we have done . . . a better job . . . where appropriate [of] explaining ourselves, at least to a moderate degree.” Kagan added, “we have gotten more experienced in these constant requests that are coming to us about requests for emergency relief . . . and we have issued opinions, and sometimes majority and dissenting opinions accordingly.”
Kagan was almost certainly referring to Trump v. Cook, which might be the slowest emergency docket case of all time. Remember, President Trump purported to remove Governor Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve on August 25, 2025. Twelve days later the District Court granted a preliminary injunction. Four days after that, the D.C. Circuit denied the government’s motion to stay. The case reached the Supreme Court on September 18, 2025. It would take the Court more than 280 days to decide the case in its “interim” posture, with more than 80 pages of majority, concurring, and dissenting opinions.
Justice Alito’s dissent laid out the glacial chronology.
