Many of the Supreme Court’s decisions are reached with no hearings or explanation

IN FIVE WEEKS the Supreme Court will return from its summer break to hear a batch of new disputes, including clashes over abortion and guns. After scrutinising briefs from litigants and amici curiae (friends of the court), the justices will hear oral argument in these cases and—weeks or months later—release opinions explaining why one party won and the other lost. But this methodically adjudicated “merits docket” represents a shrinking proportion of the Supreme Court’s notable business. Although the justices handle about five dozen cases this way each year (down from more than 150 in the 1980s), they dispatch thousands of other legal tangles without fanfare—and often with scant explanation.