Judge Presses Jackson on ‘Mystifying’ Emergency Docket Orders

A federal judge pressed Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson on how lower courts are supposed to interpret the Supreme Court’s increasingly common and often unexplained emergency orders.

Judge Richard Gergel, who was appointed to the US District Court for the District of South Carolina by Barack Obama, vented his frustration to Jackson during an appearance Monday before the American Law Institute at the Ritz-Carlton in Washington.

“I can find, as a district judge, it mystifying at times where an emergency docket position of maybe just two or three pages appears to countermand longstanding Supreme Court precedent,” Gergel said. “Are we to ...