The Shadow Docket Memos Demand a Congressional Response. Act Now.

Dear Members of Congress, On April 18, 2026, the New York Times published a bombshell investigation by Jodi Kantor and Adam Liptak. For the first time, the public can read the internal memos that show exactly how Chief Justice John Roberts invented the Supreme Court’s modern “shadow docket” — and what that invention has cost American democracy. The 16 pages of leaked memos reveal that in February 2016, Roberts pushed to halt President Obama’s Clean Power Plan using the wrong legal standard, citing a BBC interview and an EPA blog post rather than the actual legal record. When colleagues warned him he was proposing an unprecedented move, he dismissed them. He weighed no downsides. He considered no alternatives. He acted, in the words of the reporting, like a bulldozer. That single paragraph ruling — issued at 6 p.m. with no oral arguments, no briefs, no detailed written opinion — was the birth of the modern shadow docket. Since then, the emergency docket has been used to hand President Trump more than 20 key victories on immigration, agency power, and beyond — all decided in secret, at speed, with no public accountability. This is not how a co-equal branch of government is supposed to operate in a democracy. We are calling on Congress to open a formal investigation into the Supreme Court’s use and expansion of the shadow docket, pass binding ethics legislation and transparency requirements for the Court, establish term limits for Supreme Court justices, and require that shadow docket rulings include written reasoning accessible to the public. The Supreme Court derives its legitimacy from the trust of the American people. These memos show that trust has been abused. Congress has both the authority and the obligation to act.