Congress Considers the SCOTUS Shadow Docket

This is a good thing. Supreme Court shadow docket: Congress scrutinizes it and considers reform. (slate.com)

The whole idea of opinions issued at 2 AM with only sketchy explanations, of that, and no real sense of what the breakdown was among the Justices ... is just wrong.

Congress certainly has sufficient supervisory authority over SCOTUS to crack down on this as necessary. Indeed, there is specific language telling us that the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court is itself subject to "such regulations as the Congress shall make."

Why could Congress not create a law saying that under any case in its appellate docket (the "original jurisdiction" docket is rather small) every Justice who votes on a particular decision shall indicate how that vote went? That would be enough to throw a little light in the shadows, already?

The image above? It's a Shadowscape Tarot Deck. That has nothing to do with anything I just said, except that it does have the word "shadow" in its name.

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