As explained here previously, the extremist members of the Supreme Court have used the shadow docket to decide many key issues in favor of the current Federal regime. In other words, the Supreme Court majority has decided numerous significant cases without written briefs submitted by the affected parties, without oral argument by those parties, without questions from the Supreme Court in response, and without written opinions to explain the reason(s) for the Supreme Court majority’s decisions. Put simply, the Supreme Court majority lacks the transparency and accountability necessary to decide matters with integrity and clarity. In fact, the Supreme Court majority decided more cases last term through the shadow docket than through the merits docket, overturning many decades of settled law in multiple cases and transferring enormous authority to the current President as a result. The eagerness of the Supreme Court majority to intervene on the current President’s behalf has upended American life according to Donald Ayer, the former Deputy Solicitor General and Attorney General for Republican President Ronald Reagan and Republican President George H.W. Bush, as reported by ProPublica: “on many subjects of real importance to our future, they’ve demolished what used to be the law.”

Even when the Supreme Court majority has decided cases through the merits docket, it has decided cases in ways that thwart the rule of law while broadening Presidential power to unprecedented levels. Most recently, the Supreme Court majority overturned nearly 100 years of binding precedent to declare that the current President can now remove the leadership of Federal agencies for any reason and despite existing removal protections for those leaders to preserve their independence. In this outrageous example of judicial activism, Trump v. Slaughter, the Supreme Court majority fully embraced the unprincipled politicization of Federal agencies like the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the National Labor Relations Board, the United States Department of Labor, and the Federal Trade Commission. Consequently, any Federal agency leader who does not show sufficient subservience in the eyes of the current President can be replaced with someone who is an unquestioning loyalist. Stating the obvious, the ability of Federal agencies to promote civil rights, civil liberties, and the public interest otherwise will suffer even more than it already has under the current Federal administration. In this context, the current President announced via social media that Slaughter is “the Greatest Increase in Presidential Power in the last 100 years.”