As the U.S. Supreme Court launches its new term on October 6, 2025, the nation's attention is riveted by the court's increasingly powerful role in shaping President Donald Trump's policies. With a solid 6-3 conservative majority, the court has, over the past nine months, been at the center of a heated debate over executive authority, judicial process, and the future of American democracy. The stakes? Nothing short of the boundaries of presidential power and the public’s trust in the highest court in the land.
Since President Trump’s return to office on January 20, 2025, the Supreme Court has issued a flurry of emergency rulings—often with little explanation—allowing the administration to carry out sweeping policies that, in many cases, had already been blocked by lower courts. According to Reuters, the court has acted in 23 emergency cases involving Trump’s policies, siding with him fully or partially 21 times. These actions have included greenlighting the withholding of $4 billion in foreign aid, mass firings of federal employees, and the implementation of controversial deportation measures under a rarely used 1798 law. In one notable case, the court allowed Trump to pursue mass federal layoffs, even as litigation continued in the lower courts.
This expansion of the emergency—or "shadow"—docket has not gone unnoticed. The docket, which allows the court to issue decisions without the usual process of full briefing and oral arguments, has become the administration’s go-to pathway for enacting contentious policies with lightning speed. As Georgetown University law professor Steve Vladeck told Common Dreams, the Trump administration sought emergency action from the court 19 times in just the first 20 weeks of his second term—matching the number of requests made by the Biden administration over four years. The sheer pace of these requests is unprecedented, and the court’s willingness to grant them has alarmed legal scholars and watchdog groups alike.
In many of these emergency rulings, the court has provided little or no rationale. Reuters found that in 14 of the 21 cases backing Trump, the court offered at least some explanation, but critics argue that the lack of transparency undermines both the legitimacy of the court and the rule of law. Tony Carrk, executive director of the anti-corruption watchdog Accountable.US, minced no words in a statement to Common Dreams: “The Supreme Court has regularly abetted President Trump’s unlawful power grab and indulged his anti-constitutional impulses, which has enriched himself, his family, and his wealthy allies at the expense of everyday Americans while eroding our rights, freedoms, and protections.”
The impact of these decisions is not merely theoretical. Policies allowed to proceed under the emergency docket—such as the ban on transgender people serving in the military or the cuts to National Institutes of Health grants related to racial minorities or LGBT people—can have immediate, life-altering consequences. Tulane University constitutional law professor Stephen Griffin told Reuters, “These aren't decisions that somehow maintain the status quo. If they give the president the benefit of the doubt, that might mean that your husband ends up in an El Salvador prison ... that means your research doesn't get funded.”
Perhaps most strikingly, the Supreme Court has begun treating its emergency docket rulings as binding precedent for lower courts. This is a break from tradition, as such orders were previously understood to provide only interim relief and not to decide the legal questions at hand. Bradley University law professor Taraleigh Davis explained to Reuters, “If lower courts have to follow this reasoning as precedent, then emergency docket orders are effectively deciding the law.” This shift has created tension within the judiciary, with some judges surprised to find themselves bound by what were once considered provisional decisions.
The court’s conservative majority has also signaled a willingness to overturn longstanding legal precedents, particularly those that restrict the president’s power to remove officials from independent federal agencies. For example, in cases involving Trump’s firing of Democratic members from various agencies, the court indicated it may reverse its 1935 precedent that limited presidential removal power. This, combined with the court’s embrace of the “unitary executive” theory—which vests broad control of the executive branch in the president—has further expanded Trump’s reach.
Not all justices are on board with this direction. The liberal bloc, led by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, has been vocal in its dissent. In a recent case allowing Trump to fire a Federal Trade Commission member, Kagan warned against using the emergency docket to “permit what our own precedent bars.” Jackson, in another dissent, compared the court’s emergency actions to “Calvinball,” where “the one rule is that there are no fixed rules.” She quipped, “We seem to have two: that one, and this administration always wins.”
The Supreme Court’s new term is set to address even more consequential cases, including whether Trump can use emergency powers to enact tariffs without congressional approval and whether he can fire the heads of independent agencies, such as Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, without cause. Trump has also asked the court for an expedited review of his order ending birthright citizenship—a move that has already been ruled unconstitutional by three federal judges. The conservative justices have signaled they may be receptive to overturning this right, and in June, they ruled that lower courts could not issue nationwide injunctions to block its enforcement.
Meanwhile, public confidence in the Supreme Court is waning. A Gallup poll published on October 1, 2025, found that 43% of Americans now believe the court is “too conservative,” the highest level ever recorded. Overall approval of the court has plummeted from 58% in 2020 to just 42% today. The court’s legitimacy and public trust are at risk as it continues to side with Trump in cases that expand executive power and erode traditional checks and balances.
As William & Mary Law School professor Jonathan Adler told Reuters, “The administration has picked out a small fraction of [over 300 lawsuits] to bring to the court, where the arguments that either what it's doing is perfectly fine or the district courts really got out over their skis are easiest to make.” For now, the court’s conservative majority appears reluctant to issue a direct ruling against Trump, perhaps to avoid a constitutional crisis should the president defy an unambiguous order.
With the court’s new term underway, the nation faces a pivotal moment. Will the justices continue to expand presidential power through the shadow docket, or will they reassert the deliberative, transparent process that has long defined the Supreme Court’s role in American democracy? The answer, it seems, will shape the country’s constitutional future for years to come.