…and the recent NYT expose about the origin of SCOTUS’s “shadow docket” suggests he was right. As one reader put it to me in an email about the NYT article:

Ultimate vindication of your “super legislature” moniker. Nothing in the story is particularly surprising, but it does establish that what we call the “shadow docket” began with John Roberts. And that he decided to push for massive changes to court process because of his views about the economic consequences of a particular case. “Just calling balls and strikes” indeed. It hardly bears mention that dozens of cases arising from GWB’s war on terror relating to warrantless surveillance of Americans, the detention and harassment of US citizens and permanent residents without reasonable suspicion or probable cause, etc., were given the “normal” treatment of a years-long appellate process.