The term originated in England; it was recorded in the form “doggette” in 1485, and later also as doket, doggett, docquett, docquet, and docket.
The derivation and original sense are obscure, although it has been suggested that it derives from the verb “to dock”, in the sense of cutting short (e.g. the tail of a dog or horse); a long document summarised has been docked, or docket using old spelling. It was long used in England for legal purposes (there was an official called the Clerk of the Dockets in the early nineteenth century), although discontinued in modern English legal usage.
Docket was described in The American and English Encyclopedia of Law as a courts summary, digest, or register. A usage note in this 1893 text warns that term docket and calendar are not synonymous.
A 1910 law dictionary states the terms trial docket and calendar are synonymous.
In the United States, court dockets are considered to be public records, and many public records databases and directories include references to court dockets. Rules of civil procedure often state that the court clerk shall record certain information “on the docket” when a specific event occurs.
The term is also sometimes used informally to refer to a court calendar, the schedule of the appearances, arguments and/or hearings scheduled for a court. It may also be used as a metonym to refer to a court’s caseload as a whole. Thus, either sense may be intended (depending upon the context) in the frequent use of the phrase “crowded dockets” by legal journalists and commentators.
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