The Supreme Court may have entered a new phase. Call it the emergency era.

​​Throughout its history, the U.S. Supreme Court has evolved as an institution. Now, it may be evolving once more.

Call it the emergency era.

The court once worked out of a basement room in Congress, and the justices traveled the country to preside over appeals courts. The court had no control over what cases it heard until 1891. The high court we know today arguably didn’t take shape until 1925.

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The court reached the end of June having issued almost twice as many emergency orders as it did merits opinions. Is this an anomaly, or the start of a new normal?

Now, experts say, the court is at another inflection point. This term, more than any other in the court’s history, has been dominated by the emergency docket.

The emergency docket – essentially all the cases the court decides without full briefing and oral argument – has been busier and busier in recent years. But this year has brought an unprecedented volume of emergency applications. In the past 10 weeks, the court has issued seven emergency orders. It may be an isolated spike, court watchers say, related to a new administration pushing the boundaries of presidential power. Or the Supreme Court could be experiencing a permanent shift in its own institutional power.

“We are seeing the court trying to adapt its procedures to keep up with the 21st century,” says William Baude, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School and a former clerk for Chief Justice John Roberts.

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