We will discuss the "shadow docket" (Chemerinsky pp. 673-74) as part of SCOTUS's review of federal courts. This is an increasingly controversial subject, especially in the first months of the current administration.
In addition to that reading, look at NIH v. APHA, especially Justice Gorsuch's concurring opinion, and pp. 23-31 (especially FN 9) of Harvard v. HHS.
Two more things. First, read this NBC New story based on interviews with ten lower-court judges. Beyond what this tells us about the emergency docket, consider the problems or benefits of rhetoric such as Justice Gorsuch uses and the response from Judge Burroughs and those interviewed for the NBC story. How does the nature of the emergency docket create tension among the courts and with the executive and public?
Second, this NY Times story (H/T: Sara) on a district judge "apologizing" for failing to treat an emergency order as binding precedent. I put apologizing in danger quotation marks because it is not clear he was apologizing as much as explaining why he approached the cases as he did. Read this in connection with Harvard FN 9, which reflects a different response to Justice Gorsuch.
