Adam Liptak

The first two were quite consequential, and the second one in particular basically shut down a way to try to challenge restrictions on voting by minority voters.

So it stands to reason that

that this latest installment in the court's deconstruction of the Voting Rights Act will have a considerable impact in the short term, in the election we're about to face, and certainly in years to come.

So a good way to think about this is to contrast it with the usual way the court handles cases.

Lawyers call this the court's merits docket, and this is what we're kind of used to.

The justices spend a lot of time considering which cases they're going to hear, and they get briefs on that.

And if they decide to hear a case, they get another round of briefs and supporting briefs, and then they hear arguments.

And then they sit together and discuss and vote.

And then they exchange drafts, five, 10, 15 drafts of opinions and concurrences and dissents.

And after all this process winds itself out for like a year, they issue a reasoned decision, could be 100 pages long.

With lots of concurrences and dissents, and it's the product of great care and deliberation.

And these decisions, of course, are law that binds the nation, that gives guidance to lower courts, tells litigants how they have to act.

That's the Supreme Court we're used to.

The shadow docket short-circuits all of that.

It happens in a very brief period of time on thin briefs, no arguments, no in-person deliberations.

It gives rise to rulings with scant or no reasoning at all.

We don't know.

Right.

Well, defenders of the shadow docket, the emergency docket, will say a couple of things.

One is that these kinds of orders have a long history, and that's true.