Justice Samuel Alito says Supreme Court is not a 'dangerous cabal'

Justice Samuel Alito on Thursday rejected criticism that the Supreme Court has improperly handled some of the cases that come to it as a part of its emergency docket without the benefit of a full briefing schedule and oral arguments.

Alito said the goal of his lecture at the University of Notre Dame was to "dispel some imaginary shadows" and push back on a notion that he claimed was put forward recently by the media and those in the political sphere that the court was acting in a way, he said, that was "sneaky or dangerous."

He said the recent criticism was geared to suggest "that a dangerous cabal is deciding important issues in a novel, secretive, improper way, in the middle of the night, hidden from public view."