SCOTUS' "stay jurisprudence" – the standards the Court uses to decide, inter alia, whether or not, during the weeks and months and sometimes years that are required before a final judgment is issued in any case, Executive Branch officials must obey the injunctions that have been entered against them – is of growing importance these days.
It's becoming increasingly clear – I'd call it obvious, even - that the lowly stay, heretofore a rather pedestrian and deeply unspectacular procedural device, is a central pillar of the President's strategy for dismantling statutory and constitutional constraints on executive power.
Here's how it works. The pattern is mind-numbingly familiar by now, having been repeated in dozens and dozens – probably hundreds, by now – of cases[1]:
