Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) asked Jackson for her thoughts on shadow dockets, hours after the Supreme Court on Wednesday morning used the shadow docket to throw out a Wisconsin Supreme Court decision on redistricting maps.
“Because this decision just came out, I don’t expect you to have immediately reviewed it,” Klobuchar told Jackson. “But I just want to make this point that in her dissent, Justice [Sonia] Sotomayor, joined by Justice [Elena] Kagan, called the court’s move unprecedented.”
A shadow docket is when the court issues an emergency order or summary decision without oral argument.
In her dissent, Sotomayor noted that the court, in this emergency motion, is overturning the state Supreme Court’s decision in a way that is generally reserved for violations of settled law.
Klobuchar said that the court’s increasing practice of using a shadow docket to decide cases that have “grave consequences for our democracy” — including the right to vote — “is incredibly troubling.”
Jackson said she needed to first talk to the justices to better understand their use of the shadow docket, but drawing from her experience as a court clerk, she said she knows there is a “need to balance getting a full briefing” during emergency circumstances.
Jackson said that the court does recognize the value of allowing “lower courts to hear issues” and that “at least in some of the recent cases, the justices have had oral argument related to some emergency matters.”
“But from my perspective as a judge in the work that I’ve been doing, I know that it’s important to hear from the parties,” Jackson said.