“During the era in which the justices have employed the shadow docket in this really unprecedented way, trust in the court has plummeted,” says New York Times reporter Jodi Kantor. “And it hasn't even come close to recovering.”Tim Mossholder/Unsplash
Last month, the Supreme Court issued a number of landmark opinions involving transgender rights, campaign finance, executive power, and immigration. Those decisions were issued in the traditional way many of us recognize: pages and pages of arguments and citations, with each justice on the record voting yea or nay. But over the last decade, the court—led by Chief Justice John Roberts—has increasingly relied on a fast-track way of making decisions that was once rarely used. It’s known as the shadow docket.
Few reporters have done more to shine light on the shadow docket than New York Times investigative journalist Jodi Kantor. Along with her colleague Adam Liptak, Kantor recently published a number of previously undisclosed memos detailing the shadow docket’s unprecedented expansion under the Roberts court.
“So many major decisions about presidential power are being made on the shadow docket,” Kantor says. “And the question for the Supreme Court is why they’re doing business in this way and why in a lot of these decisions they are not writing opinions.”
On this week’s More To The Story, Kantor talks to host Al Letson about what’s driving the Roberts court to bypass the traditional ways of issuing decisions and how that’s affecting public trust in the court. Plus, Kantor looks back at her Pulitzer Prize–winning reporting on sexual abuse allegations against Harvey Weinstein that helped set off the #metoo movement and argues that obituaries for the movement almost 10 years later are dead wrong.
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