Alito’s nearly hour-long speech, titled “The Emergency Docket,” was presented by the and its (CAROL) Lab, and co-sponsored by the .

The emergency docket allows the court to make decisions quickly when necessary and has been demonized for political reasons, Alito said during a speech at the University of Notre Dame’s McCartan Courtroom. He said the rise of a new nickname coined in a 2015 law review article — “the shadow docket” — is partly to blame for misperceptions and criticism surrounding the court’s use of the emergency docket.

“The catchy and sinister term ‘shadow docket’ has been used to portray the court as having been captured by a dangerous cabal that resorts to sneaky and improper methods to get its ways,” he said. “This portrayal feeds unprecedented efforts to intimidate the court or damage it as an independent institution.”

His comments came a day after the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the process, with Democrats attacking it as ideologically driven.

The shadow docket allows the court to bypass oral arguments and the normal deliberative process, and has been criticized as lacking transparency. But Alito, one of the court’s most conservative justices, said that rulings on emergency applications are “nothing new” and the number of such cases to come before the justices has increased in recent years.  

He cited several recent cases where the court’s review of emergency applications has drawn attention, including its lifting of a Centers for Disease Control ban on evictions during the coronavirus pandemic. The justices also ruled in the summer against the Biden administration’s efforts to roll back a Trump-era order requiring migrants to remain in Mexico pending completion of their removal hearings.

Alito dismissed “false and inflammatory” claims that the court’s 5-4 decision on the Texas abortion law amounted to an overturning of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that made abortion legal in the U.S.

“We did no such thing and we said that expressly in our order,” he said. The Texas law went into effect last month.

He gave a 10-point rebuttal of criticisms of the emergency docket, dismissing as “rank nonsense” the allegation that the Supreme Court issues its rulings in the middle of the night to avoid attention from reporters and the public. He said that, often with only hours to make a ruling, the court may not have time to hear oral arguments, but its processes — aside from private deliberations — are fully transparent.

“We do the best we can under the time constraints imposed by this situation,” he said, comparing the court’s work in such cases to emergency room treatment.

Without citing specific names, Alito blamed politicians as well as the media for portraying its expedited rulings, which often come without full opinions from the court, in a negative light.

“Journalists may think that we can just dash off an opinion the way they dash off articles,” he said, but “when we issue an opinion, we are aware that every word that we write can have consequences, sometimes enormous consequences, so we have to be careful about every single thing that we say.”

Alito is the second Supreme Court justice to visit Notre Dame in recent weeks. Justice Clarence Thomas delivered the 2021 Tocqueville Lecture on Sept. 16. Another justice, Amy Coney Barrett, is a 1997 graduate of Notre Dame Law 91��Ƶ and served as a professor of law for several years.

Kellogg Institute Director , a law professor at Notre Dame, said Alito has been in dialogue with Kellogg about issues in the field of comparative constitutional law for nearly a decade.

During his visit to Notre Dame, Alito met with both undergraduates and graduate students and Notre Dame faculty. He also provided advice to principal investigators with the CAROL Lab, one of several Kellogg labs that support high-impact, high-yield research while bridging scholarship and policy. The Kellogg Institute specializes in interdisciplinary research on democracy and human development. 

The CAROL Lab engages civil society actors, national political bodies and international organizations by advising on matters of constitutional development and reform, democratic institutions and the rule of law.

“With one of its primary aims being to convene and engage apex court judges from around the world, CAROL is fortunate to be able to attract the interest of one of the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court,” Carozza said.

The  series includes essays from students, scattered since mid-March around the globe, about how the virus is impacting their home countries, their families and their daily routines. All of the undergrads are part of Kellogg’s or the minor.

The project was initially intended to give foreign students a voice at a time when coronavirus’s impact on the United States dominates the news. Due to student interest, it has since been expanded to include their American counterparts.

Kellogg Associate Director, who manages the institute’s undergraduate programming, said COVID Reflections grew from the recognition that the voices of those from abroad — and particularly from the global South — were not being heard. As an international institute, Kellogg can give them a platform to share their stories.

“The Kellogg Institute has a responsibility to represent the developing world,” she said.

The deeply personal essays have come from students in Mexico and Botswana, among other countries. One undergrad — ‘21, a Venezuelan sheltering in Minnesota during the crisis — described “grim” conditions in her home country, which was grappling with political turmoil and extreme poverty even before the pandemic.

"I guess the greatest lesson this situation has taught me is that we must try not to be shortsighted and to look beyond our circumstances. It is easy to dwell on the fact that sports were canceled, our semester turned virtual, and we cannot leave our homes; however, there are people who are facing even worse conditions — there are people choosing between death by disease or by starvation,” she wrote.

Another student, ‘21, was angered and hurt that the suffering of people in her native China was largely ignored by the West, even as heart-wrenching stories of death and despair from Europe dominated headlines. ’22 of Bolivia said she felt lucky that she and her family were able to properly mourn her father when he passed away in the pre-coronavirus era, while those who lose loved ones in the pandemic are barred from the normal rituals of grieving, like attending burials and most funerals.

Rivers said students have told her that the writing process has been cathartic.

“For a number of them, it’s been an opportunity to sit down and process what’s going on, from changes to their classes to trying to figure out where to live,” she added. “We have a lot of students who are stuck in the U.S. right now and they can’t go to their home countries. Some of them are at home but don’t know if they can get back.

“Writing helps them figure out:  What does this crisis mean and how does it impact me?”

The project was the brainchild of ., director of Kellogg’s , who said the essays help faculty and students alike learn how people are responding to the pandemic in different countries.

“In this sense, it is an attempt to promote greater awareness, initiate thinking about important questions raised by the pandemic and responses to it, and cultivate a sense community and solidarity across national borders,” he said.

Researchers with the Ford Program, which studies integral human development with a focus on the developing world, are also contributing reflections on how coronavirus is impacting their research projects. Faculty Fellow  wrote that the coronavirus has halted fieldwork in two projects in Kenya and Uganda. 

He described his concerns about how the Kenyan government would treat a serious outbreak in the massive Dandora slum of Nairobi, where one of his projects is based. “I fear that in a situation like that, the goal would be a harsh containment strategy rather than a serious attempt at treatment. People in Dandora generally feel like they do not get support from their government, and if the crisis intensifies there it may lead to serious loss of life.”

The award is given annually by the in recognition of substantial contributions to human development through research, practice, public service or philanthropy. The Ford Program is part of the at the University of Notre Dame.

Busingye is president of , a Kampala, Uganda-based nongovernmental organization that provides medical care, schooling and other services that help patients increase their self-sufficiency and develop social networks. She received the award at a Sept. 12 ceremony at the Hesburgh Center that was followed by a moderated armchair discussion on “The Value of a Life: AIDS, Outcasts, and the Search for Dignity in Uganda.”

Busingye helps patients recognize their inherent dignity and worth in a society where they are often shunned because of their medical diagnosis.

“They are not defined by their sickness or by their poverty,” she said. “They are defined by their value ... it is something that originally was there, that they were created with.”

Previous Ford Family award recipients have been well-known within the field of international development, such as last year’s winner, Nobel Peace Prize laureate .

By comparison, Busingye’s efforts have received relatively little attention.

“In giving this award to her, we’re trying to raise the awareness of important work that often goes unrecognized,” said Ford Program director . “Some of the best work going on in the world is where it’s not being recognized, where there’s not a lot of PR for it, where it’s not being backed by millions of dollars, and we want to highlight that work.”

Today, Meeting Point International supports more than 1,000 people and provides indirect services for thousands more affected by disease, poverty and war. In addition to offering counseling, health and hygiene courses, adult literacy classes, and microcredit loans, the organization runs an orphanage and operates a bead-making enterprise that helps women earn money to support their families.

According to Dowd, Busingye embodies the Ford Program’s research and teaching focus on integral human development, a holistic model of human flourishing rooted in Catholic social thought that emphasizes the importance of being connected to others.

“Rose is doing the kind of work that promotes integral human development, and those of us seeking to do the same have much to learn from her efforts,” he said. “She accompanies women in ways that free them up and helps them to make the most of their God-given potential.”

The Ford Family Award is named in honor of University Trustee Emeritus Doug Ford ’66 and his wife, Kathy, whose generosity helped establish the Ford Program.