More Trump losses expected now that the Supreme Court can't hide behind the shadow docket

Donald Trump’s string of Supreme Court wins has hit a wall, in no small part because the court is in session and the so-called “shadow docket” has been shelved until the court recesses again for the summer.

According to a report from the Washington Post, the president’s massive loss on tariffs that came down on Friday, combined with a December blow limiting his ability to deploy National Guardsmen in Chicago, is a sign of things to come as the justices are forced to justify their legal reasoning.

Before the court was back in session, the conservative majority was free to use the shadow docket to hand the president a flood of court wins on procedural grounds, with no accompanying opinions.

According to the Post report, Friday’s blow to Trump’s executive authority “signals the start of a new and fraught era of relations between a president who chafes at limits on his power and justices tasked with checking excesses by the executive and legislative branches.”

In an interview with the Post, Leah Litman, a professor of law at the University of Michigan, the country may be witnessing a sea change in the president’s relationship with the court he has become dependent upon.

“The court is more willing and inclined to rule against presidents toward the end of their tenure, as they are less popular,” Litman explained. “The rulings would be consistent with that trend since we have seen dwindling support for Donald Trump, and the tariffs are not all that popular.”

Add to that, “Another factor in the shift in Trump’s success rate at the high court could be that the rulings in his favor last year came on the court’s emergency docket. Those were temporary orders designed to establish the legal status quo while the underlying cases worked their way through lower courts. Now the justices are starting to grapple with final decisions,” the Post is reporting.

That led Richard H. Pildes, a New York University School of Law professor, to suggest, “This term, the court will begin to confront much more fully the substantive legality of major initiatives of the Trump administration. We will have a much better sense by the end of this term of the relationship between the court and President Trump.”

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