Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic

An acclaimed legal scholar exposes the Supreme Court’s use of the behind-the-scenes “shadow docket,” regularly making decisions affecting millions of Americans without public hearings, and issues an urgent call to bring the Court back into the light. 15,000 first printing.
"At 11:34 PM on April 9, 2021, the Supreme Court issued an emergency ruling. California governor Gavin Newsom's bid to enact enhanced COVID restrictions was overturned in a sweeping redefinition of existing law. The shadowy circumstances of this ruling-an unsigned decision made in just a few pages, without a full briefing, and in the middle of the night-are not typical of the Supreme Court. But, as legal scholar and expert Stephen Vladeck shows, they're becoming far too common. The Supreme Court has always had the authority to issue emergency rulings-halting an execution or preventing a law from going into effect until lower courts could rule on its constitutionality-but until recently, it did so only in exceptional circumstances and issued only narrow rulings. Yet in the past decade, the court has expanded its use of the behind-the-scenes "shadow docket" dramatically, handing down major decisions that impact millions of Americans without oral argument or signed opinions, and often without any legal reasoning at all. While typical cases take years, shadow docket cases can take weeks. They typically fly under the public radar, too-until now. In The Shadow Docket, University of Texas law professor Steve Vladeck offers a comprehensive analysis of the shadowdocket, tracing its emergence in the 1970s in the wake of major court decisions on the death penalty and its recent embrace by a conservative-leaning court that has expanded it to set policy on everything from election law to abortion to immigration. Yetwhile Republican appointees have been most enthusiastic in their use of the shadow docket, the docket itself is not partisan, and Vladeck makes the case that Americans of all political stripes have a stake in bringing the court's decision-making processes back into the light. Rigorous yet accessible, The Shadow Docket exposes a disturbing institutional crisis that threatens the foundations of our democracy, and calls for sweeping reform".
An acclaimed legal scholar exposes the Supreme Court’s increasing use of unsigned, unexplained orders to change the law all behind closed doors  The Supreme Court has always had the authority to issue emergency rulings in exceptional circumstances. But since 2017, the Court has dramatically expanded its use of the behind-the-scenes “shadow docket,” regularly making decisions that affect millions of Americans without public hearings and without explanation, through cryptic late-night rulings that leave lawyers and citizens scrambling.  The Court’s conservative majority has used the shadow docket to green-light restrictive voting laws and bans on abortion, and to curtail immigration and COVID vaccine mandates. But Americans of all political stripes should be worried about what the shadow docket portends for the rule of law, argues Supreme Court expert Stephen Vladeck. In this rigorous yet accessible book, he issues an urgent call to bring the Court back into the light.