Following the Supreme Court’s grant of near-total immunity to Donald Trump, the president has issued executive orders at a record pace, with the conservative-leaning court approving most of them through the so-called “shadow docket.” According to the New Republic’s Erin M. Carr, Trump’s radical restructuring of government operations relies heavily on rhetoric while remaining legally questionable. The court has granted the president extraordinary latitude in his actions. Carr repurposed the concept of “sanewashing” –– a term describing how mainstream media transforms Trump’s incoherent statements into palatable content for public consumption. She argues the Supreme Court engages in a similar practice by legitimizing the president’s legally tenuous executive orders. Carr contends this judicial approach is not unprecedented. The Roberts Court has consistently engaged in what she characterizes as sanewashing across two decades of rulings. “Relying on judicial sanewashing, the Roberts Court has eroded due process protections, political accountability, and civil rights, while simultaneously consolidating power for itself, corporations, gun owners, Christian conservatives, and state officials who owe their political influence to heavily gerrymandered districts.” In recent months, the Roberts Court has adopted a new sanewashing strategy through the shadow docket. “On the shadow docket, the Roberts Court has inserted itself into high-stakes legal challenges against the Trump administration, sanewashing and mischaracterizing lower court rulings preventing the administration’s lawless conduct as ’emergencies’ to justify intervening on the president’s behalf,” Carr wrote. “Notably, the shadow docket has been expanded by the Roberts Court for the near-exclusive benefit of the Trump administration, and only the Trump administration.” Carr warns of the consequences: “The Roberts Court has legitimized anti-democratic legal theories and advanced a biased, ahistorical interpretation of the Constitution through the sanewashing of law and fact. The extent and magnitude of the effects of judicial sanewashing are now on full display, threatening to corrupt our democratic system and shared sense of reality.”
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