The Supreme Court needs to do a better job explaining its emergency rulings, including recent ones siding with the Trump administration, Justice Elena Kagan said on July 24.
“Courts are supposed to explain things,” Kagan said in public remarks at a judicial conference in California when asked about those quick decisions. “They’re supposed to explain things to litigants. They’re supposed to explain things to the public, generally.”
She gave as an example the court’s recent decision allowing the Trump administration to fire hundreds of workers from the Education Department and continue other efforts to dismantle the agency.
While Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a 19-page dissent that was joined by Kagan and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the majority did not say why it lifted a lower court’s order putting Trump’s plans on hold.
A casual observer might conclude that the Supreme Court ruled Trump has the authority to scrap the Education Department, Kagan said. But that was not the legal question the administration asked the justices to decide when appealing the lower court’s order.
