Posted on 07/02/2019 1:49:08 PM PDT by Jagermonster
In a matter of hours last Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court blocked a citizenship question from next year’s census and blocked federal courts from hearing challenges to extreme partisan gerrymandering.
Twenty-four hours later, as the reactions continued to pour in, the court made the quiet, but equally seismic, decision to hear a case about President Donald Trump’s decision to end an Obama-era program protecting hundreds of thousands of immigrants who were brought illegally to the United States as children.
That case concerning the termination of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, likely one of the biggest cases the court decides next year, was also one of the headline features of the court’s “shadow docket.”
Definitions of the shadow docket vary, but it essentially encompasses every decision the justices make that doesn’t receive a merits-based oral argument. These decisions can range from declining to hear a case to staying (or declining to stay) the execution of a death row inmate. Due in part to the fact the justices often debate and decide them behind closed doors, they rarely receive the widespread attention that major decisions do.
That hasn’t been quite the case this past term. While the partisan gerrymandering decision will have major long-term ramifications, as could the court’s unanimous decision to rein in civil asset forfeiture by law enforcement agencies, the past term has been relatively quiet on merits cases. Arguably the biggest story of the term was Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s contentious confirmation to replace the retired Justice Anthony Kennedy last fall.
A number of actions on the shadow docket, meanwhile, could have major implications for the next term – during a presidential election campaign – and beyond.
(Excerpt) Read more at csmonitor.com ...
The Swamp and its black-robed clowns just pretend that it is.
The Founding Fathers never intended this nation to be governed by unelected judges making offstage moves in the shadows.
In the “Census Question” case, the Supremes added motive as part of the equation in deciding a case. That does not bode well for Trump being able to strike DACA through an executive order.
Trump didn’t end DACA. It expired.
Amen to that!
Too late to return Pennsylvania to the Districts the Penn Govt created, that were upended in favor of more Dem controlled Districts?? Which turned Pennsylvania to a Dem controlled state?
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