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EMERGENCY-DOCKET EXPERIMENTS
Edward L. Pickup* & Hannah L. Templin**
The Supreme Court's emergency docket is no longer relegated to
the shadows.1 Recently, commentators,2 congressmen,3 a Presidential
Commission on the Supreme Court,4 and dissentingJustices have scru-
tinized the so-called shadow docket.5 Its defenders are equally vocal:
Justice Alito has insisted that the criticism is much ado about nothing.6
© 2022 Edward L. Pickup & Hannah L. Templin. Individuals and nonprofit institu-
tions may reproduce and distribute copies of this Essay in any format at or below cost, for
educational purposes, so long as each copy identifies the authors, provides a citation to the
Notre Dame Law Review Reflection, and includes this provision in the copyright notice.
* Law Clerk, United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit;J.D.,
Yale Law School; M.A. (Law), University of Oxford.
** Assistant Solicitor General for the State of Arkansas; J.D., Yale Law School. The
views expressed in this Essay do not reflect those of my employer.
We thank Will Baude and Josh Blackman for commenting on earlier drafts and to
Grier Barnes, Alexi Ehrlich, andJose Giron for their excellent editing and suggestions.
1 See William Baude, Foreword: The Supreme Court's Shadow Docket, 9 N.Y.U. J. L. & LIB-
ERTY1, 3-5 (2015).
2 See, e.g., Adam Liptak, Missingfrom Supreme Court's Election Cases: Reasons for Its Rul-
ings, N.Y. TIMES (Oct. 26, 2020), https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/26/us/supreme-
court-election-cases.html [https://perma.cc/NG4H-PCSY]; Stephen I. Vladeck, The Su-
preme Court Is Making New Law in the Shadows, N.Y. TIMES (Apr. 15, 2021), https://www.ny-
times.com/2021/04/15/opinion/supreme-court-religion-orders.html [https://perma.cc
/M8M5-PASX].
3 See, e.g., The Supreme Court's Shadow Docket: Hearing Before the Subcomm. on Cts., Intell.
Prop., & the Internet of the H. Comm. on the judiciary, 117th Cong. (2021) (testimony of Ste-
phen I. Vladeck, Charles Alan Wright Chair in Federal Courts, University of Texas School
of Law); Texas's Unconstitutional Abortion Ban and the Role of the Shadow Docket: Hearing Before
the S. Comm. on the judiciary, 117th Cong. (2021) (testimony of Stephen I. Vladeck, Charles
Alan Wright Chair in Federal Courts, University of Texas School of Law) [hereinafter Wa-
deck Statement].
4 See PRESIDENTIAL COMM'N ON THE SUPREME COURT OF THE U.S., DRAFT FINAL RE-
PORT 203-09 (2021).
5 See, e.g., Barr v. E. Bay Sanctuary Covenant, 140 S. Ct. 3, 6 (2019) (Sotomayor, J.,
dissenting) (criticizing her colleagues for failing to exercise [] ... restraint in granting
the government's application for a stay); Whole Woman's Health v.Jackson, 141 S. Ct. 2494,
2500 (2021) (Kagan, J., dissenting) ( [T]his Court's shadow-docket decisionmaking ...
every day becomes more unreasoned, inconsistent, and impossible to defend.); Merrill v.
Milligan, 142 S. Ct. 879, 883 (2022) (Kagan, J., dissenting).
6 See Katie Barlow, Alito Blasts Media for Portraying Shadow Docket in Sinister Terms,
SCOTUSBLOG (Sept. 30, 2021, 6:59 PM), https://www.scotusblog.com/2021/09/alito-
1](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/ndalro98&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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