Stephen I. Vladeck’s The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic

The Shadow Docket by Stephen Vladeck is an overview of the Supreme Court’s emergency docket and how “non-merit” cases move through the Court’s docket. Vladeck’s discussion of the history, practice, and powers of the emergency docket is in-depth and well researched. However, it fails to objectively discuss the growing practice of non-merits decisions from a neutral view. Rather, Vladeck focuses on the actions of what he calls the Court’s “conservative” wing. While Vladeck’s failure to objectively review the non-merits decisions of the Court makes for an incomplete analysis, it does not take away from the importance of his research regarding the “shadow docket.” This review of Vladeck’s work looks to provide an analysis of the history covered within the book, the discussed practice, and provide an objective review of its content.