A legal expert warned Thursday that the Supreme Court’s shock rulings this month are just the tip of the iceberg for what’s to come.
"We haven't hit bottom yet," New York Times opinion editor Kate Shaw said as she hosted a panel of experts discussing the court.
She didn’t mince words as she slapped the nation's highest court with a devastating C-minus grade for its performance, warning that the institution "could go lower" as it continues to rule on cases involving the Trump agenda.
The court last week handed Trump a major win in his drive to limit birthright citizenship. Though it didn’t rule directly on if the president’s push — driven via an executive order — was legal, it halted lower judges' powers to halt it using sweeping injunctions.
Shaw's scathing critique came during a heated online debate with fellow law professors Will Baude of the University of Chicago and Georgetown's Stephen Vladeck, author of "The Shadow Docket" — a damning exposé of how the Court has been secretly amassing power through stealth rulings.
The exchange revealed deep fractures in how legal experts view the Court's capitulation to Trump. At the center of their fury: Justice Amy Coney Barrett's opinion in Trump v. CASA, the case that effectively neutered nationwide injunctions that could have stopped the president's unconstitutional birthright citizenship order.
"It was outcome-driven analysis," Vladeck charged, accusing Barrett of twisting legal precedent to help Trump.
Of 17 Trump-related emergency applications, the Court has provided meaningful legal analysis in just one case, the panel surmised.
The most chilling revelation: the Court has granted emergency relief to the Trump administration in multiple cases where the government openly defied lower court rulings. "The court's (entirely unexplained) grant of emergency relief gives at least the appearance of acquiescing in the government's defiance," Vladeck warned.
Shaw demolished any notion that the Court maintains institutional integrity, pointing to cases where Trump's Justice Department has "manufactured" explanations for blatantly unconstitutional executive orders targeting law firms like Perkins Coie.
The professors agreed on one terrifying reality: the Court's collegiality is collapsing. Justices are now trading public barbs in published opinions, with some viewing Trump as an existential threat while others see him as legitimately elected — a fundamental split that mirrors the country's state.
"The justices are divided in much the same way as the country," Vladeck observed ominously.
