US supreme court pursuing rightwing agenda via ‘shadow docket’, book says

Steve Vladeck says conservative majority is bypassing public scrutiny with unsigned orders on religion, abortion and more

Conservative justices on the US supreme court consciously broke with decades-old congressional rules and norms to shift laws governing religious freedom sharply to the right through a series of shadowy unsigned and unexplained emergency orders, a new book reveals.

Five of the six conservatives who now command the majority on the US's most powerful court have rammed through some of their most contentious and extreme partisan decisions using the so-called shadow docket" - unsigned orders issued frequently late at night, in literal and metaphorical darkness. The orders do not reveal who voted for them or why, often providing one-line explanations of the legal thinking behind them.