The Supreme Court must reject shortcuts as its new term begins

By Adele Rutherford · Reporting from Atlanta · October 3, 2026

As the Supreme Court opens its new term, the justices must reject rushed emergency rulings and enforce strict procedural boundaries against executive overreach.

The emergency docket swallows the court

The Supreme Court opens a new term on October 2, 2026, as reported by NPR. The court agreed to hear 30 cases, according to PBS. That small number tells the real story of modern American jurisprudence. Amy Howe observed that the justices hear relatively few cases on the merits. Instead, they conduct a massive share of their work on the emergency docket. That docket, while theoretically temporary, carries long-term effects for the litigants involved, as noted by PBS. City Journal reported that this docket recently handled disputes over mail-in voting and citizenship databases. It also handled congressional district maps, the construction of the White House ballroom, and third-country deportations. In September, the Court temporarily blocked an effort by Donald Trump to restrict mail-in voting via an emergency ruling. On September 29, the justices issued another emergency ruling in Department of Homeland Security v. D.V.D. This ruling allowed third-country deportations to continue while the policy awaits full review.

When emergency relief becomes the primary vehicle for national policy, procedure loses its moorings. The shadow docket lacks extensive explanations and unsigned orders do not lend themselves to rigorous appellate critique. Judge the process, not the score. A procedural shortcut that feels convenient today is the very tool your opponents will wield tomorrow. The long historical pattern shows that administrative convenience steadily eats away at standing limits. We define the emergency docket as the sequence of petitions where the Court issues temporary rulings without full briefing. Standing is the constitutional requirement under Article Three that a party must suffer a concrete injury to sue. Rushed emergency decrees threaten to settle massive questions without the steady friction of adversarial testing. The Court must return to the slower, public labor of the merits docket. We define the merits docket as those cases where the Court grants full review and hears oral arguments. There, arguments are tested in daylight rather than rushed through the night.

Climate, guns, and the limits of state power

The merits docket itself forces the justices to draw sharp lines between state and federal authority. In Suncor Energy Inc. v. County Commissioners of Boulder County, scheduled for arguments on October 5, Boulder is suing. The city and county sue Suncor and Exxon Mobil for monetary compensation under state law, as detailed by City Journal. They allege claims of nuisance, trespass, unjust enrichment, and civil conspiracy. The Colorado Supreme Court ruled that the lawsuit targets the production and sale of fossil fuels. The energy companies argue that federal law and the U.S. Constitution bar the suits. Meanwhile, Justice Samuel Alito recused himself from the case on September 28. In Viramontes v. Cook County, the Court will decide whether the Second and 14th Amendments protect semiautomatic rifles. The case is consolidated with other challenges regarding AR-15s. David French noted that the vast majority of jurisdictions do not ban AR-15s. He observed that the democratic process has worked its way through in the gun control arena. Yet the lower courts fractured. The Seventh Circuit ruled in Viramontes that AR-15s fall outside the Second Amendment text. The Second Circuit ruled in Grant v. Higgins that they are unusually dangerous weapons that may be banned.

The strongest opposing case insists that local communities must retain flexibility. They must address acute public harms like climate change and gun violence through traditional state powers. Without nuisance claims against energy conglomerates, the argument goes, local citizens are left without a remedy. But this view ignores the structural chaos of permitting fifty distinct state tort regimes. These regimes would dictate national energy and environmental policy. A tort is a civil wrong, other than a breach of contract, for which the law provides a remedy. Nuisance is a field of tort liability concerning unreasonable interference with the use and enjoyment of land. In Employment Division, Department of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872 (1990), the Court held that the state could deny unemployment benefits to a person fired for violating a state prohibition on the use of peyote even though the use of the drug was part of a religious ritual. Similarly, a coherent federal system cannot permit local juries to rewrite interstate commerce and environmental standards through state-law nuisance claims. A rule that only works while your preferred local jurisdiction holds the courtroom was never a rule at all.

The administrative state under executive pressure

Executive power and administrative independence collide elsewhere on the docket. This is most notable in the ongoing battles over federal agency removals. In June, the Supreme Court ruled that Lisa Cook was owed notice of allegations before removal, as reported by CNBC. She was also owed an opportunity to respond. This allowed her to remain on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors during litigation. President Donald Trump could seek the removal of three Federal Reserve board members. These include Jerome Powell, Lisa Cook, and Michael Barr. Powell's term as a governor continues through January 2028. A Federal Reserve inspector general report found managerial problems that increased headquarters renovation costs by approximately $1 billion. However, it found no evidence of administrative misconduct or criminal violations. Donald Trump stated that Powell is a disaster and should not sit on the board. Powell countered that the new threat is not about testimony or building renovations. He called those reasons pretexts. As Scott Alvarez noted, all have an incentive to litigate and stay. If they stay while the term goes on, the administration's agenda stalls.

The federal judiciary exists precisely to referee these structural collisions without regard to who currently occupies the Oval Office. When executive frustration meets statutory tenure protections, the temptation to invent administrative shortcuts is immense. The executive may strain statutory text to reach a desired political outcome. The capital stock of judicial legitimacy spends fast and refills slowly. The justices must resist the urge to fashion ad hoc rules for independent agency removals. They must also resist shortcuts for immigration detentions, such as the policy challenged in Rhoney v. Barbosa da Cunha. A bond hearing is a proceeding where an immigration judge determines whether an alien may be released from custody. Paul Dwyer noted that detaining Ricardo Aparecido Barbosa da Cunha without bond serves no purpose other than punishment. Courts must insist on statutory fidelity even when it frustrates the executive branch.

The Supreme Court must reject procedural shortcuts on the emergency docket. It must decline to let local tort suits fracture national energy policy. Finally, it must enforce structural boundaries against executive overreach.

The Supreme Court must reject shortcuts as its new term begins

The emergency docket swallows the court

Climate, guns, and the limits of state power

The administrative state under executive pressure

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