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Shadow Docket
September 22, 2025
Edith Olmsted
Elena Kagan Tears Into Supreme Court for Letting Trump Run Amok
Kagan warned the court was allowing “what our own precedent bars.”
September 12, 2025
Matt Ford
How the Supreme Court Stacked the Shadow Docket Deck for Trump
If you’re wondering how the high court’s lawless sausage got made, we must turn to an obscure line from a long-forgotten 1977 case.
September 9, 2025
Matt Ford
John Roberts Defies the Supreme Court
If the chief justice was once a judicial institutionalist, he has become all too eager to cast norms and precedent aside in matters that benefit Trump.
September 7, 2025
Matt Ford
Trump Has Ignited a Civil War Between the Federal Courts
The Supreme Court’s burgeoning conflict with the lower courts is rooted in whether the courts should show fealty to law and legal precedent or to an authoritarian president.
April 8, 2025
Edith Olmsted
Ketanji Brown Jackson Torches Supreme Court Shadow Docket in Dissent
The justice wrote a scathing dissenting opinion in the court’s latest decision to back Donald Trump.
October 12, 2022
Matt Ford
The Supreme Court Shows No Signs of Slaking Its Thirst for Capital Punishment
A pair of death penalty decisions reaffirms a sad fact about the high court: There is a majority of justices who want to keep the executions coming.
March 3, 2022
Matt Ford
Welcome to the Supreme Court’s Phantom Docket
The Roberts court is taking up cases with phantasmal litigants and speculative complaints. But how it resolves them could have a massive impact on American life.
February 9, 2022
Matt Ford
The Supreme Court Is Even More Conservative Than You Think
Long before the 6–3 court hands down rulings, the cases it chooses to hear have a tidal effect on the nation’s ideological drift.
January 5, 2022
Matt Ford
Can John Roberts Save the Supreme Court From Itself?
The chief justice’s veiled end-of-year remarks seem to indicate that if the high court cannot reform itself, reform will be forced upon it.
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