we are back with stephen vladeck discussed his new book "the shadow docket".is about the supreme court's action to change law without public hearings justifying the decision in a public manner. the morning. >> thanks for having me. pres. biden: thank you so much for joining us. big, fancy positions that we get each term from the supreme court, whether about abortion or affirmative-action. these long signed, thoroughly explain decisions that we may agree with or disagree with, but that we have lengthy explanations for. it turns out it is only about 1% of all of the decisions the supreme court hands down. 99% of the rulings of the supreme court hands down by volume are these unsigned, unexplained orders that reside in obscurity that are publicly accessible but not really understandable. the term shadow docket was coined by a conservative university of chicago law professor in 2015 to capture that other part of the courts work. an umbrella term to suggest, over here where we are not paying attention, there is a lot of stuff going on that can be significant. host:

we are back with university of texas law professor stephen vladeck, he will be discussing his new book called the shadow docket about the supreme court's increasing use of emergency action to change law without public hearings or justifying their decision in a public manner. steve, good morning. guest: good morning. thanks for having me. host: thanks for joining us. let's start by you explaining what is the shadow docket, and where does this name come from? guest: when we took up the supreme court, we took 60 to 70 big, fancy positions that we get each term from the supreme court, whether about abortion or affirmative-action. these long signed, thoroughly explain decisions that we may agree with or disagree with, but that we have lengthy explanations for. it turns out it is only about 1% of all of the decisions the supreme court hands down. 99% of the rulings of the supreme court hands down by volume are these unsigned, unexplained orders that reside in obscurity that are publicly accessible but not really understandable. the term shadow docket was coined by a conservative university o

we speak with texas law professor and author stephen vladeck. "washington journal" is next. ♪ >>.t is sunday, may 21. president biden wrapped up his visit to japan for the g7 summit. instead of traveling onto australia and papa new guinea, he would return to the white house. here, biden will continue to meet with congressional leaders in hopes of ironing out an agreement to lower the debt limit. administration officials say that limit could be reached as soon as june 1. we want to hear from you today, what are your thoughts about the g7 trip and the debt limit debate? democrats, you can dial us at (202) 748-8000. republicans, your line is (202) 748-8001. independents, we want you to call us at (202) 748-8002. you can also send us a text message at (202) 748-8003. please include your name and where you live. you can find us on facebook.com/c-span. on twitter @cspanwj, and on instagram @cspanwj. let's start off by talking about the debt ceiling. here is an article i want to pull up by the hill. the headline says, mccarthy signals that limit negotiations cannot move forward until bid

it's part of what's become known as the shadow docket, which is the title of a new book by stephen vladeckxas law professor. first off, i gave a very incomplete description of of one small part of the shadow docket. prof. vladeck: it's an umbrella term that basically describes everything that supreme court does other than the 60 or so big merits rulings. that is the ones that we're used to seeing big headlines about. it's only about 1% of what the court does. 99% of the dispositive rulings the supreme court hands down are these unsigned, unexplained orders. most of them are anodyne, but increasingly, a lot of them are not. john: you write that this began to take off in the 80's and 90's with death penalty cases. obviously there is urgency there because executions are scheduled. but you also say that it really accelerated and changed under the trump administration. prof. vladeck: that's right. so the real sort of rise, what we think of as the modern flurry of this kind of emergency application where the court is being asked to intervene early in the case, and not as the court of last resort