Something I am confused on as my own experience along with recent research just doesn't make much sense about a recent happening from the SCOTUS. How to explain this…
Okay, so to my understanding, and granted I could be wrong here but I do not believe I am. But anyhow, to my understanding, the oversight of lower courts and to put a hold on their decisions or give them an extension to provide materials (to the lower court) is handled by the most junior of Justices. As it stands right now the most junior would be Kavanaugh. This came up several years back when I noticed Kagan was putting holds on/extending lower court decisions while the SCOTUS determines the viability of a case OR to give time to the lower court to deal with new data. Kagan took care of numerous such issues back then. I thought nothing of it at the time and figured it was merely procedure. More recently I noticed Gorsuch was handling such things and there are many articles to point to this being the case when he first came in as a junior Justice.
Fast forward to recently and we see that Ginsburg made the decision to halt the lower court until December 13th on the POTUS financial records. This struck me as odd because it broke from the very consistent norm of the junior justices handling such writs in terms of extending or halting.
My question: Am I incorrect here as, in the past, it appears that the writ literally went through the most junior Justices law clerks and only ever touched the desk of the higher Justices if there was a needed vote for stay, extension or SCOTUS accepting of the issue. I just do not see why Ginsburg would ever be involved in this seeing as she is second longest standing Justice on the SCOTUS and Kavanaugh would be responsible for such things at this point in time.