Top Highlights

• The book’s overwrought subtitle is How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic. The target of Vladeck’s misguided attack is the Court’s use of unsigned orders (as opposed to formal decisions) to manage its docket.
• The “shadow docket” is an epithet sometimes used to refer to the Court’s disposition of procedural matters such as case scheduling, granting and vacating stays, ruling on so-called “emergency motions,” issuing injunctions, and even whether to hear a particular case on the merits. Such procedural dispositions are typically issued via “orders” withou...
• In a typical year, the Court—whose jurisdiction is, with a few exceptions, discretionary—receives between 7,000–8,000 petitions for certiorari (requests for review), and “grants cert.” in only about 80, or about one percent. The rest are summarily rejected, without oral argument or an explanation of reasons.
• There is simply no way nine Justices and their staffs could consider all 7,000–8,000 appeals on the merits. Keep in mind that the number of cases briefed, argued, and decided in the Supreme Court each year, with a full (and often lengthy) written decision, is generally between 60 and 80.

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