The Supreme Court’s “shadow docket” is in the spotlight
Make Me Smart
Marketplace
4.6 • 5.4K Ratings
🗓️ 6 June 2023
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It’s that time of year when the Supreme Court issues a bunch of important decisions on high-profile cases before its summer recess. But it turns out there’s a whole other docket of decisions that usually fly under the radar.
It’s called the emergency docket, or “shadow docket.” And the use of this lesser-known docket is changing the way the Supreme Court engages with wide-reaching, often divisive issues, and shaping law on the ground.
“We’re seeing every big fight in contemporary American public policy getting to the Supreme Court faster through these emergency applications, and provoking the justices to take a position sooner because of these emergency applications,” said Stephen Vladeck, law professor at the University of Texas and author of the new book “The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic.”
On the show today, Vladeck explains what the shadow docket is, why emergency decisions by the Supreme Court have become more common over the past decade, and what this all means for the credibility of the court in the eyes of the American public.
In the News Fix: Speaking of the Supreme Court, we’ll get into how its upcoming decision on affirmative action could muddle diversity efforts at colleges across the country. And we’ll explain why pharmaceutical companies are pushing back against the new Medicare drug price negotiation program.
Later, listeners weigh in on local dog bars and virtual reality headsets. Plus, this week’s answer to the Make Me Smart question comes from singer, songwriter and condiment lover, Priska Neely.
Here’s everything we talked about today:
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- “Book Review: ‘The Shadow Docket,’ by Stephen Vladeck” from The New York Times
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- Priska Neely’s “Ode to Condiments” on YouTube
We love to hear from you. Send us your questions and comments to [email protected] or leave us a voicemail at 508-U-B-SMART.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Are you curious about the hidden side of everything that I have the podcast for you? |
| 0:04.9 | I'm Stephen Dubner, host of Freakinomics Radio. Every week we hear from some of the world's |
| 0:09.3 | most fascinating scholars and thinkers as we tackle a variety of topics like why the best employees |
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| 0:28.1 | wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 0:58.1 | This is a smart as all of us. It is Tuesday, June 6th. |
| 1:01.9 | And I'm Kimberly Adams. Thank you for joining us, everyone, for our weekly deep dive into a single |
| 1:07.8 | topic. And today we're talking about the Supreme Court. It's the time of year when the court usually |
| 1:13.2 | issues a bunch of important decisions on the highest profile cases right before it goes |
| 1:18.7 | on summer recess. This year we're expecting decisions on everything from affirmative action |
| 1:24.0 | to student debt relief. But at the same time there's a whole other docket or kind of listing |
| 1:31.5 | of decisions that often flies under the radar. And it's known as the emergency docket or shadow |
| 1:39.5 | docket. That's what we're going to get into today with our guest Stephen Vladik. He is a law |
| 1:44.0 | professor at the University of Texas, an author of the new book The Shadow Docket, how the Supreme |
| 1:49.8 | Court uses stealth rulings to amass power and undermine the republic. Stephen, welcome to the show. |
| 1:56.8 | Thanks, thanks for having me. All right, so let's start with a quick definition. What is the shadow |
| 2:02.0 | docket and why do we call it that? Yeah, so it's a term that was coined by a law professor at the |
| 2:08.0 | University of Chicago in 2015. Basically to describe all of the stuff the Supreme Court does other |
| 2:14.9 | than those big fancy merits cases that you just alluded to other than the 60 or so fancy decisions |
| 2:22.5 | the court hands down each term largely in May and June. The ones that were used to think about |
| 2:26.8 | we think about the Supreme Court. It turns out those decisions are only about 1% of the output |
... |
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