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The catchy and sinister term shadow docket has been used to portray the court as having been

captured by a dangerous cabal that resorts to sneaky and improper methods to get its ways.

And this portrayal feeds unprecedented efforts to intimidate the court or damage it as an independent institution.

Welcome to Talking Feds, a round table that brings together prominent figures from government law

and journalism for a dynamic discussion of the most important topics of the day. I'm Harry

Lentman. The Supreme Court starts its annual term this week at an extraordinarily fraught moment

for the court and the country. In any year, the cases that the court has agreed to decide would

put it in the eye of the hurricane. It will be hearing disputes about the separation of church and

state, gun control, national security, and for good measure, the most portentious abortion case

or perhaps any case that it has heard in decades. The court embarks on this blockbuster term

with public opinion and near a critical all-time low through some combination of the tempestuous

confirmations of its newest three members and its own performance in the first full term with

a dominant hard right majority. The justice has plainly been stung by the sharp criticism and we

have had in recent weeks the remarkable display of a public relations pushback by several members

of the court. And the cauldron of controversy is fired up all the more by the ongoing political

divide that continues to royal our political life and makes it for example the case that a majority

of Republicans continue to believe that the 2020 election was stolen. The new court has not had

occasion to fully define itself. This is the term when the five must lay their cards down and show

the American people who they are as a court and where they are willing to take the country.

And while the hard right majority can work its will as it chooses in individual cases,

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