Jodi Kantor

It's a quote from a document.

Were those documents given to you?

Oh, don't even ask.

I'm not telling you.

Okay.

That's what I want you to know.

The Supreme Court is often presented as neutral, orderly, above politics.

What has become visible now as you look more closely at the dynamic in this group of supermajority conservative justices?

The reason it's very hard to find out is that the court over the last 10 years and especially recently has essentially become more secretive.

For anyone who doesn't know what the shadow docket or the emergency docket is, I want to define it for a sec.

This is an alternate way of deciding cases.

It's really just happened in the last decade, in which the court not only bypasses a lot of its usual careful processes of consideration and writing, they make these kind of fast-track, shortcut decisions, but they often do it without explaining their logic.

And the reason that is shocking is because...

judges explain their logic.

That's how they get authority.

You know, to write an opinion as a

And so to write an opinion is to hope that even somebody who truly disagrees with the opinion will accept it.

And therefore, it's really important in upholding rule of law, right?

It's like a real act of respect and glue for the public.

In these emergency cases, shadow docket cases—