KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh on Thursday defended how the Supreme Court has handled an increasing number of emergency cases brought by the Trump administration, pushing back against the criticism that the justices are failing to explain themselves.
Since President Donald Trump took office in January, his lawyers have frequently asked the court to intervene when lower courts have blocked executive actions on issues such as his hard-line immigration policies and efforts to fire federal employees.
The cases are brought on an emergency basis, through the court’s so-called “shadow docket,” and the court often decides them quickly, mostly in favor of the government, without full briefings or oral arguments, and sometimes with little or no explanation.
But Kavanaugh, speaking at a conference attended by judges and lawyers in Kansas City, said the court takes the cases seriously and has made efforts to give them the attention they deserve.
Kavanaugh conceded that it is “not a trivial question” whether a president’s policy can go into effect while litigation continues, but he added that the court does not want to signal that what is a preliminary assessment of the legal merits is the final word on the issue.
“Because of the importance of those questions, we have been, I think, doing more and more process to try to get the right answer on those preliminary assessments,” he said.
He mentioned, for example, that the Supreme Court heard oral arguments and issued a lengthy ruling when it narrowed injunctions that had blocked Trump’s plan to end birthright citizenship.
He also cited cases involving Covid-19 vaccines that arose during the Biden administration in which the court heard arguments before issuing a decision.
“I think we’ve written a lot more than we have in the past,” Kavanaugh said.
With judges facing tough scrutiny, especially in the face of harsh criticism from Trump and his allies when they rule against him, Kavanaugh thanked the judges in the room for their role in protecting the rule of law.
“So I come to you all with great respect for … what we all do to preserve what I think is the crown jewel of our constitutional democracy, which is the independence of the judiciary,” he said.
But, he added, as a judge “you have to recognize and have thick skin and know that criticism comes with the territory.”
