Over five days in the winter of 2016, the justices of the Supreme Court exchanged an extraordinary series of confidential memos about how the court should address an ambitious climate change initiative from President Barack Obama. The debate yielded an order halting the program by a 5-to-4 vote — without any explanation.

Legal scholars have called the episode the birth of the modern shadow docket, in which the court has used truncated procedures cloaked in secrecy to block or allow major presidential initiatives in terse rulings. Ordinarily, justices’ confidential papers are not disclosed until after their deaths, meaning the public might not learn what happened, and why, for decades.

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The New York Times has obtained the memos and confirmed their authenticity. Here are key excerpts, along with our analysis. (You can read the full 16 pages of memos here.)