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

The next one is Shadow Docket by Professor Steve Vladeck. It's about how the Supreme Court's motion docket, how ruling on special emergency motions, can change the law in ways that are not immediately apparent to us.

As University of Texas law professor Stephen Vladek argues in his new book The Shadow Docket, as courts become the battlefield for fights over voter suppression laws, election integrity disputes, perhaps even the legitimacy of future election results, democracy itself may depend upon a Supreme Court widely perceived to be legitimate.

If the court's legitimacy turns upon the court's ability to explain itself, then the rise of the shadow docket is anathema to that understanding.

The people can hardly be expected to acquiesce in decisions that they can't possibly be expected to understand.

Joining us now is University of Texas law professor Steve Vladek.

He is the author of the new book The Shadow Docket, how the Supreme Court uses stealth rulings to amass power and undermine the republic.

The Shadow Docket, How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic.

As courts become the battlefield for fights over voter suppression laws, election integrity disputes, perhaps even the legitimacy of future election results, democracy itself may depend upon a Supreme Court widely perceived to be legitimate.

If the court's legitimacy turns upon the court's ability to explain itself, then the rise of the shadow docket is anathema to that understanding.

The people can hardly be expected to acquiesce in decisions that they can't possibly be expected to understand.

And I might say that the court is not itself even bothering to explain.

The Shadow Docket, how the Supreme Court uses stealth rulings to amass power and undermine the republic.

as courts become the battlefield for fights over voter suppression laws, election integrity disputes, perhaps even the legitimacy of future election results, democracy itself may depend upon a Supreme Court widely perceived to be legitimate.

If the court's legitimacy turns upon the court's ability to explain itself, then the rise of the shadow docket is anathema to that understanding.

The people can hardly be expected to acquiesce in decisions that they can't possibly be expected to understand.

New York Times bestselling author of The Shadow Docket Which is now out in paperback

But the occasion for this episode is Steve's new book, The Shadow Docket, published in May with basic books.

The book actually tries to suggest that you can't understand the court at all without understanding the shadow docket.

The book is called The Shadow Docket, how the Supreme Court uses stealth rulings to amass power and undermine the Republic and it is available in all of the customary formats at all of your favorite booksellers including our favorite bookshop.org but it's also an audiobook, correct?

University of Texas law professor Stephen Vladeck, who's written a book called, not incidentally, The Shadow Docket, says that the thing is when the court issues these orders, the idea is that these cases will come back later for a formal decision by the court with full briefing and oral argument.

Even in a great empire there might be a degree of virtue and justice, such as the Greeks believed to have existed under the sway of the first Persian kings, but all such empires were liable to degenerate and soon incurred the anger of the gods.

In contrasting the small Greek city numbering about 20,000 inhabitants, with the barbaric greatness of the island of Atlantis, Plato probably intended to show that a state such as the ideal Athens was invincible though matched against any number of opponents.

He's a professor at the University of Texas School of Law and is a nationally recognized expert on the Supreme Court and constitutional law. He's also the author of the best-selling book, The Shadow Docket, and has argued over a dozen cases before the high court.

it has an appropriately dark and foreboding cover with a kind of a silhouetted Supreme Court building.

I think what's happened in the last six years is that practices that had become to some degree normalized on the shadow docket have actually been used by the court in ways that it impact us a lot more from abortion access in Texas to Trump immigration policies to New York and California COVID restrictions.

in recent cases this court has been lambasted for staying a district court order based on the scanty review this court gives matters on its shadow docket.

the way that same-sex marriage was legalized in 18 states in the run-up to the Supreme Court's much more visible 2015 decision in Obergefell versus Hodges I think that's an example of you know unsigned unexplained orders that produced what we might call pro-progressive outcomes

I think the real question going forward is you know is there going to be anyone in the middle of the court anyone who is now to his right who is going to adopt any of his institutional objections to this behavior

The book is called The Shadow Docket. It's about the rise of unsigned and unexplained Supreme Court decisions that are having ever broader impacts on all of us, perhaps including a future decision regarding a subpoena for Lindsey Graham's grand jury testimony. It's due out from Basic Books early next year.