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New York Times

Kavanaugh Defends Supreme Court's Terse Emergency Orders

Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh said on Thursday that the Supreme Court should be wary of providing detailed explanations for its rulings on emergency applications like those arising from challenges to the Trump administration's efforts to transform the federal government. 'There can be a risk, in writing the opinion, of a lock-in effect, of making a snap judgment and putting it in writing, in a written opinion that's not going to reflect the final view,' he said. The justice made the remarks at the judicial conference of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, held this year in Kansas City, Mo. In a similar appearance last week at the Ninth Circuit's judicial conference, Justice Elena Kagan, who has often dissented from the court's emergency rulings in favor of President Trump, made the opposite case, saying the majority should do more to explain its reasoning. 'I think as we have done more and more on this emergency docket, there becomes a real responsibility that I think we didn't recognize when we first started down this road, to explain things better,' Justice Kagan said. 'I think that we should hold ourselves, sort of on both sides, to a standard of explaining why we're doing what we're doing.' Justice Kavanaugh was interviewed on Thursday by Judge Sarah E. Pitlyk of the Federal District Court in St. Louis, who was a law clerk of his when he was a federal appeals court judge in Washington. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.