The Supreme Court's Shadow Docket

The NPR Politics Podcast

NPR

Politics, News, Daily News

4.4 • 25.7K Ratings

🗓️ 24 November 2023

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Roe. Brown. Obergefell. Dobbs. These Supreme Court decisions are the ones that make headlines, and eventually history books. But today, the vast majority of the Court's work actually happens out of the public eye, on what's become known as the shadow docket. The story of that transformation spans more than a century, and doesn't fall neatly along partisan lines. Today, thanks to our friends at NPR's history podcast Throughline: how the so-called court of last resort has gained more and more power over American policy, and why the debates we don't see are often more important than the ones we do.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's Erica Barris.
0:02.0	Giving Tuesday is coming up on November 28th,
0:05.0	and it's the perfect time to donate in support of the news
0:08.0	and podcasts you rely on from the NPR Network.
0:11.0	Please give today at NPR.org
0:13.8	slash donate.
0:15.0	Thanks.
0:17.0	Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. And today
0:25.8	we wanted to give you something a little bit different. We know today's a busy travel day,
0:29.9	so why not spend some time with something a little bit longer?
0:34.4	Our friends at the NPR History Podcast through line
0:37.2	bring us this look at the Supreme Court's shadow docket,
0:40.4	something informal but highly consequential.
0:43.0	Here's through lines Ram Tin Ara Bluey. Late into the night on July 13, 2020, Daniel Lewis Lee was supposed to already be dead. But he wasn't. The 47-year-old, missing an eye white power neck
1:08.1	tattoos, had been convicted in 1999 of murdering a family of three.
1:14.7	And on this July Monday, 21 years later, he'd been scheduled to die by lethal injection. But just ahead of the execution, a judge intervened, putting everything on hold.
1:30.0	In an order, the judge said before any execution certain constitutional questions needed answers.
1:38.0	The government's lawyers disagreed, which sent the case to the Supreme Court.
1:45.0	Lawyers for the government and for Lee filed briefs,
1:51.0	laying out why the execution should or shouldn't move ahead.
1:55.0	The government's planned use of pent-to-barbitol is likely to cause extreme, needless pain and suffering in violation of the Eighth Amendment.
2:03.0	The Eighth Amendment does not guarantee a prisoner of painless death.
	...

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