Revision History

On April 18, 2026, The New York Times published 16 pages of internal Supreme Court memos from 2016 revealing how Chief Justice John Roberts and his conservative colleagues created the "shadow docket" as a tool for major policy decisions — beginning with the stay of Obama's Clean Power Plan. The leak, the third significant breach of Supreme Court confidentiality this decade, has intensified debate over the Court's deliberative secrecy, its inadequate leak-prevention infrastructure, and the legal near-impossibility of prosecuting whoever provided the documents.