The Inside Story of Five Days That Remade the Supreme Court (Gift Article)

[LetMyPeopleVote]

Here is a gift link to the article that described the creation of the shadow docket. It is a good read. The shadow docket is now being used to control a good number of cases that has helped the trump agenda but has resulted in a marked decreased in the approval of SCOTUS.

Link to tweet

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/18/us/politics/supreme-court-shadow-docket.html?rsrc=flt&unlocked_article_code=1.cFA.182u.kyaWan5t1KRS&smid=url-share

Just after 6 p.m. on a February evening in 2016, the Supreme Court issued a cryptic, one paragraph ruling that sent both climate policy and the court itself spinning in new directions.

For two centuries, the court had generally handled major cases at a stately pace that encouraged care and deliberation, relying on written briefs, oral arguments and in-person discussions. The justices composed detailed opinions that explained their thinking to the public and rendered judgment only after other courts had weighed in.

The New York Times has obtained those papers and is now publishing them, bringing the origins of the Supreme Court’s shadow docket into the light.....

Since then, even as the court’s approval ratings dropped, applications like the one it confronted a decade ago have proliferated, swamping the court’s ordinary work.

This is partly a consequence of a gridlocked Congress and presidents willing to push the boundaries of executive power, particularly Mr. Trump.

But it is also the result of the justices’ decision to entertain emergency requests like the one in 2016, warping procedures that had developed over centuries.

In an appearance this month at the University of Alabama, Justice Sonia Sotomayor reflected on the unceasing flood of emergency applications.

“We’ve done it to ourselves,” she said.