Using truncated procedures, the six-justice conservative majority gave a green light to many of the president’s most assertive initiatives. The emergency rulings in Mr. Trump’s favor were theoretically temporary and provisional. In practice, they allowed the president to pursue his policies indefinitely and sometimes irreversibly. In the first 20 weeks of Mr. Trump’s second term, his administration filed 19 emergency applications asking the justices to pause lower court losses while lawsuits continued. That is the total number of such applications the Biden administration filed over four years, and far more than the eight applications filed over the 16 years of the George W. Bush and Barack Obama presidencies. Many of the emergency decisions were based on rushed and cursory briefs, and came after the court did without oral arguments. They were usually delivered in orders containing scant or no reasoning. In cases decided with signed majority opinions after full briefing, oral arguments and sober consideration, the court delivered 10 6-to-3 decisions out of 56, and just six of those split with the three liberal justices in dissent. In the term that ended last July, by contrast, there were 20 decisions decided by 6-to-3 votes.
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