An emergency application is a legal filing that asks a court -- most often the U.S. Supreme Court -- to act on an urgent matter before the normal briefing and argument schedule can play out. In the Supreme Court, emergency applications go first to the circuit justice assigned to the relevant circuit. That justice can act alone or refer the matter to the full Court. Emergency applications bypass the standard merits docket and are often decided in days or weeks, sometimes without full briefing or oral argument. Critics call this the "shadow docket" because orders are frequently unsigned and unexplained.