Supreme Court’s ‘shadow docket’ brings hasty decisions with long-lasting implications, outside of its usual careful deliberation

The U.S. Supreme Court is being criticized for decisions that are made quickly and outside of public view. Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The recent publication of confidential Supreme Court memoranda by The New York Times has brought to light a pivotal moment in the court’s history. “The birth of the Supreme Court’s shadow docket has long been a mystery,” wrote reporters Jodi Kantor and Adam Liptak. “Until now.”

Originally coined by legal scholar William Baude, the term “shadow docket” refers to the Supreme Court’s emergency docket, which, as Baude wrote, includes “a range of orders and summary decisions that defy its normal procedural regularity.”