How Trump Has Benefited From the Supreme Court’s ‘Shadow Docket’

Unlike the high court’s traditional merits docket, which involves extensive legal review, oral arguments, months of deliberation by the justices, and a written decision on each case, the shadow docket’s process is accelerated and produces decisions that do not require vote counts or written rationale. 

Traditionally, an application to the shadow docket must still satisfy certain legal criteria in order for that request to be approved. The applicant must show that irreparable harm may occur if a lower court’s order is not paused, or that approval would serve in the public’s interest. 

But critics of the Supreme Court’s shadow docket rulings during Trump’s second term say that in many cases, the high court has failed to show that those criteria have been satisfied and simply approved Trump’s requests. 

“It is rarely a genuine emergency for the executive branch to be thwarted in trying to implement one of its policies while litigation is pending,” Kate Shaw, an expert on the Supreme Court and a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s law school, tells TIME. “And yet again and again, the court has concluded or appeared to conclude that the executive is experiencing this irreparable harm, such that the policy should be put into effect—regardless of how flagrantly unlawful lower courts have found the proposed policy to be.”