The Supreme Court makes almost all of its decisions on the 'shadow docket.' An author argues it should worry Americans more than luxury trips.; Insider, July 7, 2023

Erin Snodgrass, Insider; The Supreme Court makes almost all of its decisions on the 'shadow docket.' An author argues it should worry Americans more than luxury trips.

"The decisions made on the shadow docket are not inherently biased, Vladeck said, but the lack of transparency stokes legitimate concerns about the court's politicization and polarization, especially as the public's trust in the institution reaches an all-time low.

"Even judges and justices acting in good faith can leave the impression that their decisions are motivated by bias or bad faith — which is why judicial ethics standards, even those few that apply to the Supreme Court itself, worry about both bias and the appearance thereof," Vladeck writes.

The dangers posed by the shadow docket are more perilous than the wrongs of individual justices, Vladeck argues, because the shadow docket's ills are inherently institutional." 

Supreme Court Justices Don’t Like Being Criticized in Public, Which Is a Good Reason to Keep Doing It; The New York Times, May 23, 2023

Stephen I. Vladeck, The New York Times ; Supreme Court Justices Don’t Like Being Criticized in Public, Which Is a Good Reason to Keep Doing It

"We will all disagree as to whether public criticism of the court in specific contexts is fair. But what can’t be denied is that public pressure on the court has been, both historically and recently, a meaningful check on the institution’s excesses — and an essential means by which the public is able to hold unelected and otherwise unaccountable judges and justices to account.

In the case of the shadow docket, it has led the court to tamp down its aggressiveness and try to provide more explanations for its less justified interventions. In the hotly debated case of ethics reform going on now, all nine justices have already publicly committed to following at least broad ethical norms. The court can go further, and it can (and should) adopt formal internal mechanisms to enforce whatever rules the justices agree to bind themselves to — much in the way that internal inspectors general hold both the executive and legislative branches to account.

The point is not that any one set of reforms is a magic bullet. Rather, it is that a court whose legitimacy depends at least to some degree on public support is not, should not be and never has been immune to criticism and pressure from the same public."