From New York Times, I'm Michael Bobarro.

This is the Daily.

For the past decade, the Supreme Court has relied on a rushed and secretive system to make major rulings on everything from immigration

to presidential power. Now, for the first time, a Times investigation brings to light the precise

moment when that system began. Today, Jody Cantor and Adam Liptack take us inside the five days that we made the Supreme Court.

Thank you. It's Monday, April 20th.

Jody, Adam, together at last, in one episode of the Daily. Thank you for being here.

Great to be with you. It's good to be here, Michael. So you two joined forces for an investigation

that seems to begin with a genuine curiosity, which is what are the origins of the Supreme Court's shadow docket?

So tell us why you were both drawn to answering that question.

It's a pretty common sense question, Michael,

because if we look at the court's rulings,

they are doing an enormous amount of work on the shadow docket.

These are really important

rulings that bypass a lot of the time-tested steps of the court. So part of what we're asking

here is, let's go back to the beginning. How did the court start doing this? Where does this come from?

Adam, I know we've talked on the show about the shadow docket quite a bit, but just remind us what it is.

And more importantly, how, as Jody just said, it bypasses the time-tested steps of the Supreme Court.

So a good way to think about this is to contrast it with the usual way the court handles

cases. Lawyers call this the court's merits docket, and this is what we're kind of used to.

The justice has spent a lot of time considering which cases they're going to hear, and they get

briefs on that. And if they decide to hear a case, they get another round

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