Alito rebuffs criticism of Supreme Court's "shadow docket" and says justices aren't "dangerous cabal"

Justice Samuel Alito pushed back Thursday against criticism, including some from colleagues, that recent Supreme Court actions in major cases have been done hastily and in the shadows. "A dangerous cabal" improperly deciding important matters? Hardly, he said.

Alito, in remarks at the University of Notre Dame, took aim at critics of three recent decisions in which the court's conservatives prevailed over dissents by liberals.

In rapid succession beginning in late August, the court reinstated a Trump-era immigration program, allowed evictions that had been paused by the coronavirus pandemic to resume and let a Texas law severely limiting abortion go into effect.