Methinks Alito Doth Protest Too Much

Click here for an article at cnn.com by Ariane de Vogue entitled "Justice Samuel Alito says Supreme Court is not a 'dangerous cabal.'"

Alito defends the court against recent attacks, especially over the way it handed the preposterous bounty-hunting abortion law in Texas with the "shadow docket."

He said the recent criticism was geared to suggest "that a dangerous cabal is deciding important issues in a novel, secretive, improper way, in the middle of the night, hidden from public view."

Justice Elena Kagan had a few things to say about the Texas decision:

She noted that the law was written to block Texas officials from enforcing it, and instead allows anyone to bring civil suit against an individual that may have helped someone obtain the procedure.

"Without full briefing or argument, and after less than 72 hours' thought, this Court greenlights the operation of Texas's patently unconstitutional law banning most abortions," Kagan said.

She said the court's ruling illustrated how far the Court's 'shadow docket ' decisions may depart form "the usual principles of appellate process."

She noted the ruling was of "great consequence" but that it had only been "hastily" considered by the court. She said the majority barely bothered to explain its conclusion "that a challenge to an obviously unconstitutional enforcement scheme is unlikely to prevail."

"In all these ways, the majority's decision is emblematic of too much of this Court's shadow docket decision-making -- which every day becomes more unreasoned, inconsistent, and impossible to defend, " she said.

UNREASONED, INCONSISTENT, AND IMPOSSIBLE TO DEFEND -- thank you, Justice Kagan!

On Twitter, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) said:

Nope, just random that we churned out 80 partisan 5-4 decisions for Republican donors, opened dark money floodgates, crippled the Voting Rights Act, unleashed partisan bulk gerrymandering, and protected corporations from court. Pure coincidence. 

Click here for more commentary on Alito's whining. In an article entitled "Alito's political broadside against Supreme Court critics -- and how it misfires," Aaron Blake at The Washington Post says: 

“Democrats are fond of concocting ominous terms like ‘dark money’ and ‘shadow docket,’ ” Cruz maintains. Alito calls it a “catchy and sinister term” used to paint a picture of a “dangerous cabal that resorts to sneaky and improper methods to get its ways.”

The Trump administration kick-started the frequent use of the shadow docket:

According to data kept by University of Texas law professor Stephen Vladeck, the Trump administration dramatically increased its emergency requests relative to its predecessors — from just eight in the previous 16 years — one every two years — to 41 in four years.

Blake goes on:

And those requests were largely successful. As Vladeck testified earlier this year, “Not counting one application that was held in abeyance and four that were withdrawn, the Justices granted 24 of the 36 applications in full and four in part.”

That success rate is pretty extraordinary. Numbers crunched by Reuters show that in 2020, the court granted 10 of 11 emergency requests from the Trump administration and 10 of 15 from religious groups, but only about one-third of requests from state and other government groups, and precisely zero out of 97 from other private parties.

Is this a reflection of the politicization of SCOTUS? Heaven forfend.