+ Adam Liptak, “Supreme Court Keeps Ruling in Trump’s Favor, but Doesn’t Say Why,” New York Times, July 16, 2017: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/16/us/politics/supreme-courts-shadow-docket.html
Liptak: “Critics call the emergency docket ‘the shadow docket,’ and its use was on the rise even before it was turbocharged with the arrival of Mr. Trump’s second administration. Justice Elena Kagan used that term in 2021 in criticizing the court’s work. The majority had just issued a midnight ruling that left in place a Texas law effectively overturning Roe v. Wade in the state — as the court would do nationwide the next year.”
+ Avakian on the US Supreme Court as an instrument of fascist domination: https://revcom.us/en/bob_avakian/bob-avakian-revolution-126-more-why-only-sustained-determined-action-decent-people-can
‘Along with overturning Roe v. Wade and its “no nationwide injunctions” decision favoring Trump, Avakian writes, ‘this fascist-dominated Supreme Court has made other outrageous rulings. Last year (2024), when Trump was facing criminal charges, the Court, through an opinion written by Chief (In)Justice Roberts, granted Trump immunity for anything he does as part of “official presidential acts.” As one of the “liberal” Justices on the Court pointed out, the “logic” of this ruling would allow Trump to order the assassination of people and be protected by “presidential immunity”! And there have been a number of other rulings by the majority on the Supreme Court this year that have given “legal” backing to outrageous actions by the fascists…All this because those who make up the majority on the Supreme Court are not acting as “legal scholars” who adhere to the Constitution and make rational judgments about whether laws are constitutional. They are fascist functionaries who “re-interpret” the Constitution and the laws, ignoring and defying legal precedent, basic logic and the clear meaning of things, as a key part of enforcing the aims of the Trump fascist regime, of which they are effectively an instrument.’
+ The sadistic Book of Job: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Job
+ “Worse than unitary executive theory” (Street): https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/04/opinion/trump-schmitt-strauss-intellectuals.html
“With a blitz of moves in his 100 days in office,” writes U. Penn professor Damon Linker, “President Trump has sought to greatly enlarge executive power. The typical explanation is that he’s following and expanding a legal idea devised by conservatives during the Reagan administration, the unitary executive theory.
It’s not even close. Mr. Trump has gone beyond that or any other mainstream notion. Instead, members of his administration justify Mr. Trump’s instinctual attraction to power by reaching for a longer tradition of right-wing thought that favors explicitly monarchical and even dictatorial rule.
Those arguments — imported from Europe and translated to the American context — have risen to greater prominence now than at any time since the 1930s…”
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