Other aspects of the Supreme Court’s work in administrative law also deserve a realistic reappraisal. In an era when federal agencies and state governors can make and remake rules with head-spinning quickness, and when federal trial courts are much more adept at issuing “nationwide injunctions” that determine federal regulatory policy, it would be unrealistic for the Court not to think hard about modernizing its own procedures for taking cases, issuing decisions, and granting emergency relief in the meantime. In fact, developments during and after the Covid-19 emergency suggest that the justices already are undertaking that procedural reconsideration—carefully, prudently, and realistically.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. famously asserted that “the life of the law is not logic but experience.” Actually, the law needs both. And constitutional logic and administrative experience increasingly point to a new era of reform.