shadow docket
8 briefs
The Court That Stopped Explaining Itself
Leaked memos show Roberts built the shadow docket in private to kill policies he couldn't stop openly. The court's legitimacy crisis is now documented from the inside.
Leaked Supreme Court Memos Show Roberts Built the Shadow Docket to Block Obama's Climate Policy
The documents don't just expose how a 2016 emergency stay happened. They reveal that the Chief Justice used internal persuasion campaigns to make unsigned, unreasoned emergency orders a standard tool of conservative governance.
The New York Times Got the Supreme Court's Internal Memos. The Leak Matters More Than the Memos.
SCOTUS justices are publicly feuding over the shadow docket just as someone with access handed their private deliberations to a reporter.
Justice Jackson Says the Supreme Court Is Rubber-Stamping Illegal Policies. She Is Probably Right.
A sitting justice went to Yale Law School to accuse her colleagues of issuing 'scratch-paper musings' that let Trump implement policies courts already found unlawful.
The Justice Who Said What the Court Won't
Ketanji Brown Jackson's Yale speech against the shadow docket is not just dissent: it is a warning about what the Court has already become.
The Shadow Docket Catches Up
A divided appeals court sent the DOGE-Social Security data case back to district court. In the 89 pages of competing opinions, a Supreme Court justice's original warning about unfettered data access looks more prescient than when she wrote it.
Sotomayor Says the Supreme Court Did This to Itself
The Trump administration has filed 30 emergency SCOTUS applications. The court has ruled in its favor more than 80% of the time. Sotomayor's diagnosis: the conservative majority created the incentive by treating temporary orders as permanent wins.
The Court That Remade America: SCOTUS Is Now the First Since the 1950s to Reject Most Civil Rights Claims
A Washington Post statistical analysis finds Trump's three appointees pushed the Court to reject civil rights cases at a rate not seen in 70 years. Justice Sotomayor is publicly naming what happened.