An unusual storm is brewing inside America’s judiciary. Lower court judges are openly baffled, even frustrated, by a steady stream of Supreme Court rulings that arrive without explanation yet routinely clear the path for Donald Trump’s policies. And Justice Neil Gorsuch, one of Trump’s own appointees, has decided to fire back.
At the heart of the clash is the Court’s so-called “shadow docket” — a fast-track mechanism where decisions are handed down without arguments, without detailed opinions, and often with little more than a terse order. Once a rarely used backchannel, it has become a workhorse of Trump’s second term.
The numbers tell the story. Since January, Trump’s team has raced to the high court with 25 emergency requests. The Court has acted in 24. In 21 of them, Trump won outright or in part. Only twice has the Court said no. The pattern has left many judges scrambling to decipher what, exactly, the Court intends them to do.
Criticism has not been subtle. Judge Allison Burroughs, ruling in a case tied to Harvard University funding, noted that the Supreme Court’s emergency orders have been anything but clear, calling them riddled with “unresolved issues.” Judge Melissa DuBose, appointed under Biden, went further, flatly refusing to treat such orders as binding precedent. Even a veteran Reagan-era judge, William Young, confessed he never realized the emergency docket carried precedential weight.
Gorsuch, however, isn’t having it. In a pointed opinion — joined by fellow Trump appointee Brett Kavanaugh — he accused several judges of flirting with outright defiance. “Lower court judges may sometimes disagree with this court’s decisions, but they are never free to defy them,” he wrote, naming names in a move scholars say is virtually unheard of.
The rebuke drew sharp replies. Burroughs dismissed Gorsuch’s lecture as “unhelpful and unnecessary,” while academics warned that such public scoldings risk feeding the image of a partisan judiciary, an impression Trump himself has fueled by branding critical judges as “radical left” and even urging Congress to impeach one who ruled against him.
The shadow docket has been used to greenlight policies ranging from sweeping immigration crackdowns to military bans and federal job cuts. But with no written reasoning, lower courts are left to guess how much precedent each ruling carries. Some say the orders are binding. Others insist they are little more than placeholders.
What is clear is that the nation’s legal system is now locked in an unusual tug-of-war: a Supreme Court wielding swift, unexplained power and judges beneath it struggling to find their footing in the shadows.
