Published originally by the American Constitution Society

Year in and year out, the Supreme Court’s major rulings in argued cases generate outsized attention. But the Supreme Court’s merits docket is just half the story. This past year, some of the most important decisions came in unsigned, and sometimes unexplained, orders related to whether to stay a lower court’s ruling; this part of the Court’s docket has been called the “shadow docket” because it frequently goes unnoticed.