Supreme Court Shadow Docket

The last decade has witnessed a significant increase in academic and journalistic interest in the United States Supreme Court’s “shadow docket.” Yet despite this increased interest, there existed no systematic database of the shadow docket. The Supreme Court Shadow Docket Database provides the first comprehensive dataset on the United States Supreme Court’s use of the shadow docket.

Created by Jonathan Kastellec (Princeton University) and Robin Taboni (University of Texas), the Supreme Court Shadow Docket Database contains information on every order the Court issued between the 1993 and 2025 terms. This article summarizes the dataset, created by parsing the Journal of the Supreme Court from the 1993 through 2025 terms into individual orders. These orders are categorized into a set of usable categories, including cert denials, injunctions, summary reversals, mandamus petitions, and grant, vacate, and remands.

Researchers and analysts can access the data, codebook, and more information on the Supreme Court Shadow Docket Database website. An appropriate citation for the database would be: 

Kastellec, Jonathan P., and Robin A. Taboni. 2026. “A Database of the United States Supreme Court’s Shadow Docket, 1993–2025.” Journal of Law and Courts 14(1): 220–37. doi: 10.1017/jlc.2025.10011.

UT students interested to intern with the project can reach out to Robin Taboni.