The 'shadow docket': How the U.S. Supreme Court quietly dispatches key rulings

FILE PHOTO: U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor arrives at the 59th Presidential Inauguration in Washington, U.S., January 20, 2021. Win McNamee/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In the months before former President Donald Trump left office in January, the U.S. Supreme Court briskly paved the way for the lethal injection of 13 federal inmates, the first federal executions in 17 years.

In many of those cases, the court summarily overturned lower court rulings using an obscure legal procedure known as the “shadow docket.” But the short-circuit approach, intended only for emergencies, isn’t reserved for death penalty cases. It has, in the last four years, significantly changed the way the high court does business.