Advisory Opinions The Chief Justice Didn’t Hate President Obama | Interview: Gov. Kevin Stitt
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Apr 21, 2026 
Kevin Stitt, Governor of Oklahoma and former businessman, joins to talk McGirt v. Oklahoma. He explains how the ruling reshaped jurisdiction, the messy real-world criminal justice consequences, and why Congress has not moved to fix it. Short, clear takes on state responsibilities, coordination headaches, and the political obstacles to compromise.
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Why The Interim Docket Matters For Major National Rules
- The Supreme Court's interim emergency docket is necessary to decide short-term status quo questions while long litigation proceeds.
- Roberts' chambers pushed a stay on the Clean Power Plan because the EPA boasted the rule would become "functionally irreversible," creating immediate national effects before full review.
Memos Read Like Mini Opinions And End With An 'AMK' Decider
- The conference memos read like mini-opinions with detailed legal argumentation and civil inter-chamber debate.
- The final vote by Justice Anthony Kennedy's chambers simply thanked colleagues and cast the deciding vote, showing how 5-4 dynamics played out in memos.
The Shadow Docket Predates The Clean Power Plan Stay
- The 2016 Clean Power Plan stay is not the literal birth of the shadow docket because the Court had used emergency orders in high-profile culture-war cases earlier.
- Roberts' action looked like an inflection point tied to executive-agency activism, but abortion and same-sex marriage interim interventions predate it.
