尽管唐纳德·特朗普总统在多个战线上正面临来自议员和美国选民日益增多的阻力，但他在另一个领域却不断取得胜利：最高法院所谓的“影子 docket（紧急 docket）”。周二，最高法院发布了一项紧急命令，允许特朗普恢复将人员驱逐到其本国以外的“第三国”，从而暂时解除了下级法院的禁令。
While President Donald Trump battles growing pushback from lawmakers and American voters on multiple fronts, he is continuing to score victories in another arena: the Supreme Court’s so-called “shadow docket.”On Tuesday, the Court issued an emergency order allowing Trump to resume deporting people to “third countries” other than their own, temporarily lifting a lower court’s block.
几天前，针对特朗普政府提出的另一项紧急请求，最高法院允许在11月中期选举前使用国土安全部（DHS）一个颇具争议的数据库来验证选民资格，这是特朗普政府为打击所谓非公民投票而采取的强硬举措的一部分。
Days earlier, in response to another emergency request from the Trump Administration, the Court permitted the use of a controversial Department of Homeland Security (DHS) database in verifying the eligibility of voters ahead of the November midterms amid the Trump Administration's aggressive effort to crack down on alleged non-citizen voting.
在这两起案件中，命令均未署名，也没有给出投票结果，但最高法院的三位自由派大法官公开表示异议。
In both cases, the orders were unsigned and gave no vote count, but the Court’s three liberal Justices publicly dissented.
这些裁决只是特朗普政府在努力推进总统第二任期议程的同时，面对一系列法律挑战而向最高法院提出大量紧急救济请求，并从中获得的一系列大多有利判决的最新例证。
The rulings are only the latest in a string of mostly favorable decisions the Trump Administration has received from the Supreme Court in response to a flurry of requests for emergency relief it has made as it fights to implement the President’s second term agenda amid an array of legal challenges.
特朗普提出的此类请求数量已经远超近代历史上任何其他总统。而且，该政府向最高法院提交紧急请愿书的步伐也没有表现出放缓的迹象。周一，它又提交了一项此类请求，要求大法官们允许其对联邦监狱中跨性别囚犯的性别确认护理施加限制——此前，华盛顿特区的一名地区法院法官叫停了这项政策。
Trump has already made significantly more of those requests than any other President in recent history. And the Administration has shown no signs of slowing the pace of its emergency petitions to the Court. On Monday, it submitted yet another such request, asking the Justices to allow it to place restrictions on gender-affirming care for transgender inmates in federal prisons after the policy was halted by a district court judge in Washington, D.C.
法律专家向《时代》周刊表示，与过去相比，最高法院对该政府频繁提出的紧急请求表现得更为宽容，这使得特朗普能够以比其前任受到更少法律约束的方式推进其行政议程。
Legal experts tell TIME that the Supreme Court has been far more permissive towards the Administration’s frequent emergency requests than in the past, allowing Trump to move forward his executive agenda with less legal constraint than his predecessors.
“最高法院改变了行政部门获得此类紧急救济的规则，这些变化与过去的情况完全不同，”芝加哥-肯特法学院最高法院研究所的创始人、法学教授卡罗琳·夏皮罗（Carolyn Shapiro）对《时代》杂志（TIME）表示。“特朗普政府正是利用了这一新规则。”那么，什么是最高法院的“紧急救济程序”（Emergency Relief Procedure）呢？
“The Supreme Court has changed the rules for when the executive branch can obtain this kind of emergency relief in ways that it is completely different from what they've done in the past,” Carolyn Shapiro, a professor of law and the founder of the Chicago-Kent College of Law's Institute on the Supreme Court, tells TIME. “The Trump Administration has taken that invitation.”What is the Supreme Court’s ‘shadow docket’?
最高法院的“紧急救济程序”（也称为“影子议程”或“Shadow Docket”）是指法院接收并处理对正在审理中的案件提出的加速审查请求的机制。法官可以通过暂时撤销下级法院的裁决来回应这些请求——例如，那些被法官认定为违宪的行政命令。
The Supreme Court’s emergency docket, also known as its “shadow docket,” is the process by which the Court receives and responds to requests for expedited review in ongoing cases. Justices can respond to those requests by temporarily overturning lower courts’ decisions on, say, Executive Orders that judges deemed unconstitutional.
与最高法院传统的案件审理流程不同，传统的案件审理流程包括详尽的法律审查、口头辩论、法官们的长时间讨论以及针对每个案件的书面裁决；而“紧急救济程序”则简化了这一流程，其裁决的作出无需经过投票表决或提供书面理由。
Unlike the high court’s traditional merits docket, which involves extensive legal review, oral arguments, months of deliberation by the justices, and a written decision on each case, the shadow docket’s process is accelerated and produces decisions that do not require vote counts or written rationale.
通常情况下，申请进入“紧急救济程序”仍需满足某些法律标准：申请人必须证明，如果不下级法院的裁决被暂停，将会造成不可弥补的损害；或者证明批准该申请符合公众利益。
Traditionally, an application to the shadow docket must still satisfy certain legal criteria in order for that request to be approved. The applicant must show that irreparable harm may occur if a lower court’s order is not paused, or that approval would serve in the public’s interest.
然而，批评者在特朗普执政期间对最高法院通过“紧急救济程序”作出的裁决指出：在许多案件中，最高法院并未证明这些标准得到了满足，而只是简单地批准了特朗普政府的请求。
But critics of the Supreme Court’s shadow docket rulings during Trump’s second term say that in many cases, the high court has failed to show that those criteria have been satisfied and simply approved Trump’s requests.
“在诉讼尚未结束的情况下，行政部门试图实施某项政策时遭到阻碍，这种情况其实很少属于真正的‘紧急情况’，”宾夕法尼亚大学法学院教授、最高法院问题专家凯特·肖对《时代》杂志表示。“然而，最高法院却一次又一次地认定行政部门正在遭受‘不可弥补的损害’，因此应当立即实施该政策——无论下级法院是如何明确指出该政策违法的。”那么，特朗普政府究竟是如何从这种‘紧急事务处理程序’中获益的呢？
“It is rarely a genuine emergency for the executive branch to be thwarted in trying to implement one of its policies while litigation is pending,” Kate Shaw, an expert on the Supreme Court and a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s law school, tells TIME. “And yet again and again, the court has concluded or appeared to conclude that the executive is experiencing this irreparable harm, such that the policy should be put into effect—regardless of how flagrantly unlawful lower courts have found the proposed policy to be.”How has the Trump Administration benefitted from the emergency docket?
夏皮罗解释说，由于最高法院在作出裁决时并不需要像下级法院那样提供详细的法律理由或证据，因此它可以无视下级法院先前裁决中提出的任何证据或分析结果。
Because the Supreme Court is not required to provide the same legal reasoning or evidence for its decisions as lower courts, Shapiro explains, the high court can therefore discard evidence or analysis provided in a lower court’s previous ruling.
“下级法院一直在竭尽全力进行证据审查、形成书面事实认定，并迅速进行深入的法律分析，”夏皮罗说，“但最高法院在几乎所有暂停下级法院禁令的‘秘密议程’案件中，都忽视了这些事实认定结果。”她认为，这种做法削弱了下级法院对总统的监督权力，反而赋予了行政部门更多的权力。
“You have these lower courts that are working incredibly hard to have evidentiary hearings, and make factual findings on the record, to do deep legal analysis and to do it really quickly,” Shapiro says. “And the Supreme Court … in virtually every shadow docket case where it has stayed a lower court injunction, it has ignored the factual findings.”The impact of this, she contends, has been to disenfranchise lower courts’ authority over the President and infuse the executive branch with more power.
“这实际上使得行政部门能够做出几乎肯定属于违法的行为，”夏皮罗指出，“而最高法院对此却丝毫没有表示异议或担忧。”过去的政府在使用‘秘密议程’程序时相当谨慎：奥巴马总统在两个任期内仅提交了3份相关申请；拜登总统提交了19份申请；而特朗普总统在第一个任期内提交了41份申请，在第二个任期内也提交了同样数量的申请。
“It's had the effect of allowing the Administration to do things that are almost certainly illegal,” Shapiro says, “without even a hint from the Supreme Court that they think that's problematic.”Past Administrations have used the shadow docket relatively sparingly: President Obama submitted three applications to the docket over both of his terms. Biden submitted 19. Trump, however, submitted 41 applications in his first term, and has already made the same number of requests in his second term.
他的成功率很高：自特朗普去年1月重返白宫以来，最高法院已就涉及特朗普政府的影子案卷裁决发布了32项决定。其中24项裁决支持政府一方。
And he’s had a high success rate: Since Trump returned to office last January, the Supreme Court has issued 32 decisions on shadow docket rulings concerning his Administration. Of those cases, 24 have been decided in favor of the Administration.
这些裁决使特朗普得以推进与大规模移民打击、政府削减开支以及争议性建设项目等一系列问题相关的行动。
Those rulings have allowed Trump to move ahead with actions related to his sweeping immigration crackdown, government cuts, and contentious construction projects, among a number of other issues.
仅在上个月，除了允许第三国驱逐出境以及使用改版后的国土安全部数据库核实选民资格的决定外，最高法院还允许特朗普暂时扣留40亿美元的对外援助，裁定“对行政部门开展外交事务所声称的损害似乎超过了”本应获得这些援助的团体所面临的“潜在损害”。
Last month alone, along with its decisions to permit third-country deportations and the use of the revamped DHS database in verifying voter eligibility, the Supreme Court also allowed Trump to temporarily withhold $4 billion in foreign aid, ruling that "the asserted harms to the Executive’s conduct of foreign affairs appear to outweigh the potential harm" to the groups that would have received it.
然而，在9月的另一项裁决中，针对特朗普政府的一项请求，最高法院却站在了政府对立面，拒绝允许特朗普在即将到来的中期选举前执行对邮寄选票的限制。
In yet another September ruling responding to a Trump Administration request, however, the Court sided against the Administration, declining to allow Trump to enforce restrictions on mail-in ballots ahead of the upcoming midterms.
司法部一名官员向《时代》周刊为政府使用紧急案卷辩护，称其被用来推进总统的议程，同时并未绕过法律程序。
A Justice Department official defends the Administration’s use of the emergency docket to TIME, arguing that it has been used to accomplish the President’s agenda without bypassing legal procedure.
司法部的一位官员对《时代》周刊表示：“司法部在最高法院处理紧急申请方面有着强劲的胜诉记录，这反映出下级法院无休止且无理地阻止合法政策的频率有多高。如果没有及时的救济，任何政府的施政重点都可能在诉讼中被拖延数年。在合理的情况下请求最高法院介入，并没有破坏司法体系，这正是该体系设计时的运作方式。”
“The Justice Department has a strong record before the Supreme Court on emergency applications, which reflects how often lower courts have blocked lawful policies without justification,” a Justice Department (DOJ) official tells TIME. “Without timely relief, any administration's priorities could be tied up in litigation for years. Asking the Supreme Court to step in when it is warranted does not undermine the judicial system. It is how the system is designed to work."
但批评最高法院日益频繁的“影子 docket（影子 Docket）”裁决的人士——其中包括最高法院的自由派大法官、几位下级法院法官以及法学学者——对这种做法对美国法律体系的潜在影响敲响了警钟。
But critics of the Supreme Court’s increasingly frequent shadow docket rulings—a group that includes the Court’s liberal justices, several lower-court judges, and legal scholars—have sounded alarms about the practice’s potential impact on the American legal system.
大法官基坦吉·布朗·杰克逊上周对最高法院的影子 Docket 裁决表达了担忧。
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson expressed worry over the Supreme Court’s shadow docket rulings last week.
她在上周于哥伦比亚特区大学法学院演讲时表示：“人们严重担忧，最高法院现代的暂缓执行做法正在产生破坏性和潜在的侵蚀性影响。如果我们不小心，紧急 Docket 可能而且将会成为绕过标准审查程序的一种捷径。”杰克逊的同僚、自由派大法官索尼娅·索托马约尔和埃лена·卡根（注：此处原文拼写为Elena Kagan）也曾批评保守派多数派越来越依赖紧急 Docket。甚至连保守派大法官尼尔·戈萨奇似乎也对这种情况表露出了担忧。
“There is a serious concern that the Supreme Court’s modern stay practices are having a disruptive and potentially corrosive effect,” she said while speaking at University of the District of Columbia’s law school last week. “If we’re not careful, the emergency docket can and will become an end-run around the standard review process.”Jackson’s fellow liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor Elena Kagan have also criticized the conservative majority’s growing reliance on the emergency docket. And even conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch has seemed to indicate concerns about the situation.
据《丹佛公报》报道，他在上周于科罗拉多斯普林斯演讲时表示：“紧急情况的兴起。永久的紧急情况。一切都是紧急情况。我们将太多原本需要由各州完成的事情上移到了联邦层面。而现在，通过权力下放和形形色色的紧急立法，我们又把它交给了行政部门。我只是认为，从长远来看，这不是一个健康民主制度的秘诀。”几位下级法院的法官也公开批评了最高法院在影子 Docket 问题上的行为。
“The rise of the emergency. The perpetual emergency. Everything is an emergency,” he said while speaking in Colorado Springs last week, per The Denver Gazette. “We’ve moved so much up to the federal level that needs to be done by states. And now through delegations of authority, through emergency legislation of all stripes, we’ve moved it over to the executive branch. And I just don’t think that’s a recipe for a healthy democracy over the long term.”Several lower-court judges have also spoken out against the Supreme Court’s conduct over the shadow docket.
“在一个系统中，那些无法解释的命令在暗中影响着未来的案件走向；这样的系统其实并非代表‘统一性’，而恰恰体现了‘透明度缺失’的问题，”美国第四巡回上诉法院的法官詹姆斯·温恩（James Wynn）在最高法院去年6月允许特朗普的前政府效率部门（Department of Government Efficiency）访问社会保障数据后如此指出。
“A system in which unexplained orders silently control future cases is not one of uniformity, but of opacity,” Judge James Wynn of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals argued after the Supreme Court allowed Trump’s former Department of Government Efficiency to access Social Security data last June.
另一位联邦法官去年秋天对NBC News表示，最高法院的这种行为“是不可原谅的”，并称“他们并没有站在我们这一边”。肖（Shaw）在接受《时代》（TIME）杂志采访时说：“最高法院频繁地站在政府一方，这实在令人震惊。”
Another federal judge told NBC News last fall that the Supreme Court’s conduct “is inexcusable,” and that “they don’t have our backs.”“The court has sided with the Administration with jaw-dropping frequency,” Shaw says to TIME.
“我认为，在20世纪和21世纪，我们从未见过一个敢于公然无视法治、一再允许人们违背法律规定的法院，”夏皮罗（Shapiro）评价道。她指出，最高法院不仅忽视了下级法院提供的证据，也没有为自己的裁决提供充分的理由；她认为这“是一个极其危险的先例”。
“I don't think certainly in the 20th century and 21st century we've seen a court that has been willing to sanction just repeated defiance of the rule of law,” Shapiro says of what she characterizes as the Supreme Court ignoring evidence provided by lower courts and failing to aptly justify its rulings. “It is an extremely dangerous precedent.”