The shadow docket : how the Supreme Court uses stealth rulings to amass power and undermine the republic
(Book)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

"The Supreme Court has always had the authority to issue emergency rulings--halting an execution or preventing a law from going into effect until lower courts could rule on its constitutionality--but until recently, it did so only in exceptional circumstances and issued only narrow rulings. Yet in the past decade, the court has expanded its use of the behind-the-scenes 'shadow docket' dramatically, handing down major decisions that impact millions of Americans without oral argument or signed opinions, and often without any legal reasoning at all. ... Vladeck offers a comprehensive analysis of the shadow docket, tracing its emergence in the 1970s in the wake of major court decisions on the death penalty and its recent embrace by a conservative-leaning court that has expanded it to set policy on everything from election law to abortion to immigration. ... [The book] exposes a disturbing institutional crisis that threatens the foundations of our democracy, and calls for sweeping reform"--,Provided by publisher.