[Ads-l] More on "Shadow Docket"

[Shapiro, Fred]

Bill Mullins has posted about the term "shadow docket" and has traced the U.S. Supreme Court-related use of that term back to a 2015 working paper / law review article.  The 2015 cite appears to be the coinage of that specific sense.

Bill also has pointed to uses of "shadow docket" with more general meaning, back as far as 2006.  He has asked me whether searching of legal databases yields pre-2006 citations.  Below is the earliest I have found:


1982 Commonwealth v. Almeida, Pennsylvania Superior Court Reports 306:216
On reargument, the Commonwealth has persuaded me that I was wrong, and that "[t]his Court should announce that it will not consider pro se pleadings until these are reviewed by counsel." Brief for Commonwealth at 16. On reflection, I've concluded that the distinction between pro se arguments that "benefit[]" an appellant and those that "pose [a] danger" to him is unsound. Whatever the nature of the argument, by considering it we may, as the Commonwealth suggests, encourage other appellants to submit pro se briefs, which the Commonwealth "will have to decipher and respond to," thereby "creat[ing] a shadow docket of hundreds of appeals." Id.


Fred Shapiro



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