Speaking at the 2025 Ninth Circuit Judicial Conference in California on Thursday, liberal Justice Elena Kagan said that the high court has a "responsibility" to "explain" its emergency rulings, which are becoming more frequent during the Trump era as Democrat-run states seem to be suing his administration every time one of his executive orders doesn't go the way they'd like.
Justices “should be cautious about acting on the emergency docket,” Kagan cautioned.
“Courts are supposed to explain things,” she said. “I think as we have done more and more on this emergency docket, there becomes a real responsibility that I think we didn’t recognize when we first started down this road, to explain things better.”
Emergency rulings are typically done on an expedited basis and result in an unsigned ruling with no accompanying explanation.
There are also no oral arguments and limited briefing because of time limitations and the emergency nature of the case.
Such rulings can make it difficult to understand the legal basis for court's actions and leaves other jurists confused about how legal precedents work.
Normal rulings are usually accompanied by lengthy briefs that explain the reasoning behind the ruling.
The emergency rulings have been increasingly requested by the Trump administration because he is being sued constantly in a way that no other president before him has been.
Without the emergency rulings, his policies are in serious danger of being completely shut down by liberal judges ruling in a partisan manner and with malice toward Trump because they oppose him in knee-jerk fashion.
The court has recognized this tendency and doesn't want to see the country ruled in this way.
The left fully believes its own garbage about democracy being threatened by Trump, and the right fully believes it is the left that is threatening democracy.
Trying to weaponize the courts against a rightfully elected president is about as big a threat to democracy as it's possible to have.
If both sides can't see the error in thinking that every policy disagreement is a threat to democracy, the country is in big trouble.
Our unity appears to be fracturing beyond repair, and what's left might be a broken republic that can no longer function.
