Short of transparency, U.S. Supreme Court fails its duty: Democracy Docket

This photo taken on Oct. 31, 2022 shows the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., the United States. (Xinhua/Liu Jie)

The shadow docket is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how the Supreme Court is slithering away from democracy.

NEW YORK, March 15 (Xinhua) -- Student debt cancelation is the way forward to realizing the American dream, but conservative interests have driven the case to the Supreme Court at light speed and will likely be rewarded by the conservative majority, reported U.S. news portal Democracy Docket on Tuesday.

"This judicial overreach is enough to cause any concerned citizen a few sleepless nights. But what alarms me most about the Court is that, at the exact moment that it departs from precedent to pursue its unpopular agenda, the Court is becoming less and less transparent," said the author Rakim Brooks, president of the Alliance for Justice and a public interest appellate lawyer.

As the Alliance for Justice previously reported, the justices are increasingly relying on the shadow docket to institute seismic changes, according to the report.

"Using the shadow docket -- which handles the emergency requests to the Court that are decided without full briefing or argument and result in orders that are frequently unsigned and unexplained -- allows them to avoid their standard procedures, including the usual process of taking the time to hear from both sides in thorough briefing," said the report.

Then they issue an opinion without any explanation at all for decisions that nevertheless impact millions of people. It's bad enough that their written opinions are not accessible to most citizens, but then they insulate themselves from critique by saying as little as possible about their reasoning, it noted.

"The shadow docket is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how the Supreme Court is slithering away from democracy," it added.