Chief Justice John Roberts turned heads this week when he criticized how the Supreme Court's conservatives used the emergency docket, referred to by some as the 'shadow docket.' Here's what it is and how the court uses it.
Washington Chief Justice John Roberts turned heads this week when he criticized how the Supreme Court's conservatives used the emergency docket, referred to by some as the shadow docket.
The shadow docket is simply the nickname for emergency actions taken by the court that do not go through the full briefing and hearing process of a formal opinion.But how frequent are these emergency actions, and how do they affect the country? For a better understanding of the shadow docket, we posed a few key questions to Steve Vladeck, a CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at the University of Texas School of Law, who is writing a book on the shadow docket.