Legal scholars kicked off Cap Times Idea Fest Sept. 8, setting an all-time high record for ticket sales on a panel discussing President Donald Trump, gerrymandering and the rule of law.
Moderated by Cap Times Associate Editor John Nichols, the panelists included Kate Shaw, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania known for her work on “Strict Scrutiny,” a podcast focusing on the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS), and Jeff Mandell, the founder of LawForward, a progressive law firm involved in the fight for fair legislative maps in Wisconsin.
SCOTUS and the shadow docket
Shaw criticized the Supreme Court’s increased-reliance on a “nefarious shadow docket,” a controversial collection of cases the Court reviews without typical briefings, oral arguments or public deliberation.
“More and more, the Supreme Court also disposes of incredibly important legal questions over the summer, or really all year, but in particular this summer in applications that come to the court in an emergency posture,” she said.
The shadow docket consists of emergency motions and procedural orders decided with little to no explanation. Traditionally handling routine matters, the WHO criticized the shadow docket’s increasing use for controversial rulings.
“The Trump administration has lost in the lower courts and it is asking the Supreme Court for some kind of emergency relief essentially to be freed from the obligations that lower court rulings against it impose upon it,” Shaw continued.
SCOTUS usually remains somewhat dormant throughout the summer, however, there were 19 cases ruled on the shadow docket this summer. Shaw said the Trump administration appears to be “pushing their legal boundaries” when asking SCOTUS to step in frequently, allowing decisions to be made as an unaccountable body.
In one use of the shadow docket, SCOTUS granted a hold on Vasquez Perdomo v. Noem, barring immigration enforcement officials from pursuing mass raids grounded in racial profiling, allowing the raids to resume.
Gerrymandering
Recently, the Trump administration has promoted movements to gerrymander congressional maps in several states to favor Republican candidates. The Texas state legislature passed re-drawn maps favoring Republicans, kickstarting similar conversations in California, where Gov. Gavin Newsom aims to offset the president's efforts.
In Wisconsin, gerrymandering has been a frequent topic for state congressional and senate maps.
In 2010, Republican lawmakers gained control of the state assembly, senate and governorship, giving them complete control when redrawing Wisconsin’s voting maps. Experts considered these new maps some of the most “gerrymandered” in the country.
“Wisconsinites endured over a decade of living and voting in districts that were some of the most politically skewed in the nation,” the CLC wrote further.
In 2024 new legislative maps were signed into law after passing the state legislature with bipartisan support following a Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling the old maps were unconstitutional. Under the new maps, Democrats flipped 14 seats total — 10 assembly seats and four targeted senate seats — ending the republican supermajority in the senate.
“Gerrymandering is profoundly anti-democratic by its very nature,” Mandell said. “Wisconsin’s been the epicenter. Ending the gerrymander here wasn’t just local. It was national. Same with the fraudulent electors. Without Wisconsin, that scheme wouldn’t have spread.”
LawForward leads an initiative to change the state's congressional maps. Currently 6 of the 8 congressional seats in Wisconsin are held by Republicans, despite it being a battleground state where both Trump and former President Joe Biden won the last two presidential elections by less than one point.
Liberal law firms representing democratic voters challenged the Wisconsin congressional maps twice, in January 2024 and June 2025, asking the liberal leaning state supreme court to redraw the maps, however the court declined to hear both cases.
“Wisconsin shows how quickly institutions can recover. The 2024 elections were the first in over a decade with fair maps,” Mandell said. “We saw a surge in candidates running, competitive races statewide and turnout actually increased — unlike the rest of the country. That’s because voters finally had real choices.”
Both panelists were in agreement this is not the first time Wisconsinites have faced political turmoil, but they expressed optimism that democracy could be revived in the near future.
“Don’t overlook the Wisconsin Supreme Court,” Mandell said. “This morning I watched a friend argue her first case in years, and five of the seven justices were new to her. Change can come quickly when people are committed. We can revive democracy.”
