1. United States
2. Ariz.
3. Letter

The Supreme Court must be reined in, as it has abused powers allowing it to rule on boring or uncontroversial issues through the shadow docket and has instead chosen to overturn clearly settled lower court cases with established precedent without argument, explanation, or legal reasoning. This Supreme Court, with its ill-gotten supervisor majority, “has been using unsigned and unexplained orders to a degree and in ways which really have no precedent in the court's history," according to Steve Vladek—-and it’s hard to come to any other conclusion as we see the Court repeatedly choosing to consider cases where multiple lower courts come to the same conclusion only to have the conservatives of the Court overturn them without legal precedent or explanation in favor of the Administration’s lawlessness. Beyond the immediate questions they settle in this way, the Supreme Court’s feckless use of the shadow docket is making it impossible for the federal courts to manage their explosion of cases, as the executive pushes the boundaries of what can legally be done. When federal judges apply precedent to fairly consider outcomes, they have no guidance in the Supreme Court’s unpublished and unreasoned shadow docket decisions, wasting millions of taxpayer dollars before the Supreme Court steps in to rule in their favorite subject’s benefit. Congress must legislate its balance on the Court’s authority to ensure that its decisions actually provide precedents that lower federal courts can act on—-rather than handing one-off victories to their current head of state and master.