About "Legislating From The Bench"

#BREAKING: #SCOTUS uses shadow docket to summarily throw out Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling adopting Governor Evers’s redistricting maps.

Sotomayor and Kagan publicly dissent: pic.twitter.com/tNDV7pbDSK

— Steve Vladeck (@steve_vladeck) March 23, 2022

(And please don't compare this to Bush v. Gore. That was a per curiam opinion of the Court interpreting the Electoral Vote Count Act as establishing a deadline the Florida recount would necessarily roll past.  The Court found the deadline wouldn't allow that breach.  This is a sotto voce decision changing substantive law without attribution or even a published opinion, based solely on "We're the Supreme Court, Bitches!" Which is the entire problem with the Court now. Being a "third branch" of government, it has decided it is accountable to no one, not even posterity, and it need leave no mark. My biggest complaint with Bush v. Gore was that it was per curiam and tried to remove itself from the line of precedential cases (i.e., stare decisis). Without even a published opinion in this redistricting case there is no explanation, no justification, no possible interpretation to guide future cases. Just: "We're the Supreme Court, and we say so!" This is so, so much worse.)

#ELB: Breaking: Supreme Court, in Bizarre Unsigned Opinion, Strikes Wisconsin Legislative Maps on Voting Rights Grounds, Signalling New Hostility to the Voting Rights Act https://t.co/DC3nDOcq7F

— Rick Hasen (@rickhasen) March 23, 2022

We don' need no steenken' 15th Amendment!