[Ads-l] Shadow Docket

[Shapiro, Fred]

I got a response from William Baude, saying that his January 2015 working paper in the Social Science Research Network was his earliest use of the term "shadow docket" referring to a controversial U.S. Supreme Court practice.

Fred Shapiro

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From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of Shapiro, Fred <00001ac016895344-dmarc-request at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Thursday, April 23, 2026 8:57 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Subject: Re: Shadow Docket

Thanks, Bill, for bringing this term, one of the most important recent legal neologisms, to our attention.  You inspired me to send an email to William Baude, who was a student at Yale Law School when I worked there (I retired at the end of 2024), asking him whether he used the term "shadow docket" in its U.S. Supreme Court meaning prior to his 2015 SSRN working paper.

Fred Shapiro

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From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of Bill Mullins <amcombill at HOTMAIL.COM>
Sent: Wednesday, April 22, 2026 8:40 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Subject: Shadow Docket

Not in OED.  And I don't find it in the ADS-L archives, either (surprisingly).

General use:

2006 Tampa Tribune 21 Jun 12/2

The local scrutiny comes in response to an investigation by Attorney General Charlie Crist of whether Broward County has a shadow docket featuring prominent people.

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Specifically in reference to the US Supreme Court's trend of issuing orders in response to issues not fully resolved in lower courts and without rationale.


2015 NY University Journal of Law & Liberty Jan 1


The 2013 Supreme Court Term provides an occasion to look beyond the Court’s merits cases to the Court’s shadow docket — a range of orders and summary decisions that defy its normal procedural regularity.


William Baude, "Foreword: The Supreme Court's Shadow Docket" (University of Chicago Public Law & Legal Theory Working Paper No. 508, 2015).
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