Stephen vladeck
New York Times Bestseller
"[The shadow docket] has been something that lawyers have been talking about for a long time; it’s really important for all of us to understand it.”―Rachel Maddow
“Important…Vladeck is a conscientious guide through the legal thickets…With The Shadow Docket, Vladeck has taken it upon himself to translate the court’s deliberately cryptic orders and legal technicalities into accessible English.”―The New York Times
“Mr. Vladeck offers a fascinating chronicle of the shadow docket’s rise…The author’s skill as a law professor shines in thorough, clear explanations of how the court has run roughshod over its own jurisprudence in shadow-docket cases involving abortion, religious liberty and election law…the illumination in The Shadow Docket could help bring more principle, accountability, and ‘procedural regularity’ to the justices work —and help stop a controversial institution going completely off the rails.”―The Economist
“Vladeck offers a well-researched indictment of how the supreme court has grown to rely on using procedural orders rather than rulings to make new law, escaping scrutiny while delivering major victories to the political right…The Shadow Docket is comprehensive and sensitive to nuance, written for concerned audiences.”―The Guardian
“In The Shadow Docket, Steve Vladeck tells an urgent story about an arcane aspect of American law that has momentous implications for a host of pressing political issues—and for the institutional legitimacy of the Supreme Court itself. In elegant, accessible prose, Vladeck exposes the degree to which significant battles, from abortion to immigration, are being adjudicated behind closed doors, in unseen, unsigned, unexplained decisions. This is a powerful work of argument and explication, and a call for a return to transparency and accountability in the decision making of our highest court.”―Patrick Radden Keefe, author of Empire of Pain
"The Supreme Court's polling numbers and legitimacy have taken a nosedive in recent years, but the cases it hands down are only part of the problem. The stuff that happens in the shadows is equally alarming, and nobody has been better at explaining these shadow matters than Steve Vladeck. Tackling intricate procedural questions, Vladeck makes absolutely plain that — to repurpose an old adage — procedure isn't just the handmaid of justice, it's now her lord and master. We ignore what happens in the shadows at our peril."―Dahlia Lithwick, author of Lady Justice
“Stephen Vladeck shines a harsh light on a little-understood SCOTUS sleight of hand — the shadow docket. Vladeck describes in clear and convincing language how the highest court in the land has increasingly used obscure procedural orders to shift the legal landscape to the right, at the expense of transparency, precedent, and fundamental rights. It is vital reading.”―Preet Bharara, former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York
“The best thing you can say about a Supreme Court book is that you learned something, and I learned a ton. Vladeck cogently describes the perhaps well-meant but insidious way that the Supreme Court, in liberal as well as conservative times, slowly eroded the legal levers that prevented the Court from engineering its own agenda.”―Nina Totenberg, award-winning legal affairs correspondent, NPR