When did the Supreme Court start deciding cases before they’re heard?

The Supreme Court now regularly makes major decisions through emergency orders:
fast, often thinly explained, and before the normal legal process fully plays out.

That matters because a “temporary” order can still decide the real-world outcome.

Reading the internal memos behind the Court’s 2016 order blocking Obama’s Clean Power Plan, I expected a one-off.

It doesn’t read that way.

It feels more like an early glimpse of something that later became routine.

What makes it even more striking is that this appears to have had no real historical precedent: the Court stepped in to freeze a major presidential policy before any lower court had ruled.

Roberts keeps coming back to timing.

If the Court waits, the policy could become too costly, too entrenched, too hard to unwind later.

So is the urgency really about the law?
Or about not letting the policy take hold first?

Alito takes a different angle:

“A failure to stay this rule threatens… our institutional legitimacy.”

That’s not really about climate policy.

That’s about the Court making sure it can still matter.

Kagan is focused on something else:

“The unique nature of the relief sought… gives me real pause.”

Why step in this early at all?

Five days later, the decision comes down to one vote:

“I agree… the stay applications should be granted.”
— Kennedy

Then the order goes out.

One paragraph.

Before any lower court ruled.

Freezing Obama’s Clean Power Plan before it ever fully played out.

Reading it now, this feels like the bigger signal:

if a “temporary” stay can stop a policy before full review, the real power may lie not just in what the Court decides, but in when it decides to act.