'Hypercharged' Is the Only Word for This Supreme Court - Kate Shaw, Will Baude and Steve Vladeck @ NYT

[In It to Win It]

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Kate Shaw, a contributing Opinion writer, hosted a written online conversation with William Baude, a law professor at the University of Chicago, and Stephen I. Vladeck, a law professor at Georgetown, to assess a very busy Supreme Court as it enters a new term and its 20th anniversary under Chief Justice John Roberts.

Kate Shaw: Next week, the first Monday in October, is the start of a Supreme Court term. But the idea of a Supreme Court term — where the justices do their most important work in argued cases between October and June — now seems almost quaint. What we have seen this year from the court has been nonstop action, in particular on the shadow, or emergency, docket, that has often been shocking, in both volume and impact. That’s not just my take; that’s how it looks to some of the justices. As Justice Elena Kagan wrote in a dissent last week, the court’s procedures in emergency-docket matters are worlds apart from the court’s usual approach to argued cases, which are often “of far less import” but are decided “with far more process and reflection.”

In an earlier emergency-docket dissent, Justice Kagan blasted the court’s conduct this year, writing that the emergency docket should not be used “to permit what our own precedent bars” or “to transfer government authority from Congress to the president, and thus to reshape our nation’s separation of powers.”

Sat down with @stevevladeck.bsky.social & @williambaude.bsky.social to talk start of a new SCOTUS term, end of an unprecedented summer on the shadow docket, & 20 years of Chief Justice John Roberts

www.nytimes.com/2025/09/30/o...

— Kate Shaw (@kateshaw.bsky.social) 2025-09-30T14:15:46.220Z

[NYC Liberal]

1. The court needs a complete overhaul.

Fortunately there is very little about its structure and rules that are set in the Constitution. Other than the life terms and their original jurisdiction, things can be changed by Congress. And that has to be a priority next time we’re in the majority.