The Supreme Court's (Self-Defeating) Supremacy

In this provocative essay, Stephen Vladeck argues that a defining feature of the Roberts Court’s emergency docket jurisprudence has been an effort to preserve and reinforce the Supreme Court’s institutional supremacy, often at the expense of lower courts and Congress while enabling expansive exercises of executive authority. The article raises broader questions about whether exceptional authority can become concentrated within judicial institutions as well as executive ones, and how the normalization of extraordinary power across multiple branches of government may affect democratic accountability, institutional legitimacy, and the constitutional balance of power.