Require Supreme Court Justices to Sign and Explain Their Rulings

Congress needs to act on the Supreme Court's shadow docket. Last term, the justices issued 63 emergency orders — unbriefed, unsigned, unexplained — compared to only 56 decisions with full argument and written opinions. According to ProPublica, this is likely the first time in the Court's modern history that the emergency docket has outpaced the merits docket. That's not an anomaly. That's a business model. The consequences are real and irreversible. The Court stripped TPS protections from roughly 600,000 Venezuelans through a shadow order — arrests and removals that are, by any honest account, almost impossible to undo. It greenlit 1,400 Education Department firings the same way. These aren't interim measures buying time for proper review; they're final outcomes dressed up as temporary ones. Professor Steve Vladeck has documented how these "interim" orders routinely slide into de facto permanence without the Court ever following up. Pass legislation requiring the Supreme Court to issue signed majority opinions for any order with substantive legal effect. The Court's legitimacy rests on its power of persuasion, not just its power to rule. Justices who won't put their names on a decision that reshapes constitutional order shouldn't be making that decision at all. https://abovethelaw.com/2026/09/supreme-court-shadow-docket-is-now-bigger-than-the-real-transparent-one/