The Shadow Papers: How the Supreme Court's Secret 2016 Decision Remade American Law

On a February evening in 2016, the Supreme Court issued a single-paragraph ruling that halted President Barack Obama's Clean Power Plan without explanation, without oral arguments, and before lower courts had weighed in. The 5-to-4 decision, split along partisan lines, seemed like a curious anomaly at the time. But it marked something far more significant: the birth of the Supreme Court's modern "shadow docket," a secretive track the court has since wielded to make major decisions on issues ranging from immigration to agency power, granting President Trump more than 20 key victories.

For two centuries, the Supreme Court had operated at a measured pace—written briefs, oral arguments, in-person deliberations, detailed opinions explaining the justices' reasoning. That February night in 2016 shattered that tradition. The justices sprinted to block a major presidential initiative in a decision composed of legal boilerplate, offering no reasoning whatsoever. The order bypassed the court's time-tested procedures entirely.

Until now, the reasoning behind this pivotal 2016 order has been an impenetrable mystery. Legal experts predicted the answer would remain secret for generations, buried in the justices' internal papers. But The New York Times obtained secret memos—"the shadow papers"—that illuminate what happened during those five consequential days in February 2016. The documents reveal the internal justices' chambers correspondence, including notes from Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Stephen Breyer, and Justice Elena Kagan, showing their real-time reactions and concerns about the unprecedented move. These revelations expose not just the origins of the shadow docket, but the institutional tensions and reasoning that led the court down a path that has fundamentally altered how it operates and how it exercises power over presidential authority.