A Supreme Court leak is giving liberals new ammunition in their long-running criticism of the emergency docket after recently published internal memos showed how the high court fast-tracks major cases, a process that critics say has served to advance key parts of President Donald Trump’s agenda in his second term."The liberals are salivating over this. They're very happy because it reinforces their narrative," South Texas College of Law professor Josh Blackman told Fox News Digital.The memos, published Saturday by The New York Times, offered a rare look at how Chief Justice John Roberts pressed the court in 2016 to quickly block President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan.
THE FIVE LIBERAL COURTS THAT TIED TRUMP’S HANDS BEFORE SCOTUS CLIPPED THEIR POWERBut the immediate concern now is not about what the documents revealed about the Supreme Court’s emergency docket but rather the leak itself, according to experts, who said it was a deliberate attempt to damage the court's credibility."The bigger issue is people are leaking stuff to try to hurt the court," Blackman said. "That's the bigger story. This was done to try to make the court look bad.
Roberts, I think, doesn't come out looking very good in this one. ... I think it's designed to hurt the chief in particular."The leaked internal memos appeared centered on the 5-4 decision along ideological lines in February 2016 to block Obama's signature energy plan. The memos, written by and circulated among the justices, showed Roberts urging his colleagues to quickly intervene and halt the plan, a revelation that fueled attacks from the left on the so-called shadow docket."The new reporting highlights the role of this rashly issued stay in inaugurating the Supreme Court’s use of unexplained and hastily issued 'shadow docket' proceedings to alter major national policies," Environmental Defense Fund general counsel Vickie Patton said in a statement Monday.The leak has generated several theories in legal circles that a liberal justice or retired liberal justice or one of their former clerks passed the 16 pages of memos off to The New York Times to weaken confidence in high-profile emergency docket decisions, which have often favored Trump since he took office.
A similar, smaller-scale leak to the same New York Times reporters occurred in 2024.Blackman noted the person who gave the decade-old memos to The New York Times could share even more."This person probably kept a lot of things and decided to leak this, and there might be even more coming," Blackman said. "I think this is absolutely partisan, and it's done in a way to hurt and wound the court and to reaffirm this notion that the shadow docket is an evil, nefarious regime."SUPREME COURT’S 2026 RULINGS COULD DEFINE AMERICA FOR DECADES TO COMEGeorge Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley echoed Blackman's sentiments in an op-ed, saying "the controversy over the use of the shadow docket is immaterial to this story."Turley pointed to the Dobbs opinion leak to Politico from 2022, which was, at the time, a stunning violation of the high court's confidentiality.
Turley noted while that breach was an apparent "effort to influence the final opinion," this latest one is about an old case and therefore "had a purely malicious purpose to embarrass or disrupt the court.""The leaks appear to reflect a deteriorating culture at the court," Turley added.The Supreme Court's press office did not respond to an inquiry from Fox News Digital about the leaks.GREGG JARRETT: TRUMP’S DEPORTATION WINS ARE A REBUKE TO SCHEMING LAWYERS AND ACTIVIST JUDGESSen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., told Fox News on Monday the memos were "100%" intended to discredit the court. Hawley and his wife, Erin, a lawyer at the conservative Alliance Defending Freedom, both previously worked as law clerks for Roberts."You can tell from the news article that it builds that way," Hawley said.
"They criticize the court for how they're managing their docket. They say this is some big conspiracy. The only conspiracy is the multi-year effort funded by somebody to undermine the institution of the court from within, from without. ...
We need to find out who's doing this."The emergency docket allows litigants to bypass lengthy court proceedings and seek immediate relief from the Supreme Court if lower courts block them through restraining orders or preliminary injunctions.Democrats have criticized the Supreme Court for the higher frequency of emergency decisions, which often contain little explanation but have increased because of what legal experts say is a rise in executive actions in lieu of Congress passing laws. In Trump's second term, the justices have ruled in favor of Trump on emergency decisions most of the time, clearing the way for Trump to fire masses of federal employees, cancel hundreds of millions of dollars in federal contracts, move forward with aggressive immigration policies and more.MORNING GLORY: IF YOU CARE ABOUT THE CONSTITUTION, READ SARAH ISGUR'