The Supreme Court has heard somewhere in the neighborhood of 60-70 oral arguments per term since Justice Kavanaugh joined the Court in the 2018 term. This is well more than 100 fewer arguments than the Court heard at the highest point of arguments per term around the first few decades of the 1900’s. That time…
Charting the Justices Decisions Cutting Across Ideological Lines
Supreme Court decisions come down to coalitions and are often predicated on the question of whether a justice can garner at least four additional other votes to support their position in a case. Sometimes these coalitions are easy to come by. The Court decides somewhere around 33% or more of its cases on average per…
Are the Justices Still Party Players
All Article III federal judgeships start at the same place — with a presidential nomination. This procedure played a large role in the first several decades of statistical studies of judicial behavior, where researchers found that the party of appointing president was a strong predictor of judicial votes. While not looked at as frequently anymore,…
The Circuit Barrage: The Justices’ Divergent Votes Based on Lower Courts
Introduction While few people would argue against the proposition that the Supreme Court Justices are some of the most intelligent legal luminaries in the United States, these luminaries often rule in opposing directions. The number of the Court’s split decisions often outnumber the number of unanimous decisions. During the 2021 Term, the number of 6-3…
Measuring Oral Arguments in the 2023/2024 Term
Some things from this year’s oral arguments are clear. We know for instance, who is talking more and less. These intricacies follow from what we saw last term. Justice Jackson is the most active justice in arguments. Thomas is the least. There are several aspects of oral argument that are below this playing field surface….
What’s the Holdup in OT 2023?
Last term was supposed to be different. The Court faced the leak of the Dobbs draft opinion in May of 2022 and all signs pointed at that point to the Court’s officers expending effort to attempt to prevent such an instance from recurring. This effort in deterrence potentially slowed the decision release process for the…
The Echo Chamber Grows
A seemingly innocuous Supreme Court case in 2017 looking at the narrow issue of time bars in class action lawsuits saw two giants of Supreme Court advocacy duke it out before the nine justices. California Public Employees’ Retirement System v. ANZ Securities pit Tom Goldstein of then-named Goldstein and Russell for the Petitioner CALPERS against…
O’Connor & The Court: Breaking the Supreme Court’s Glass Ceiling
By Adam Feldman and Jake Truscott The Supreme Court stood as a monolithic institution for almost its first two centuries with it’s all male (predominately white male) composition. Confirmed in 1981 as the nation’s 104th Supreme Court justice and its first female, Sandra Day O’Connor truly broke through the glass ceiling. From her many years…
Passing the Oral Argument Torch
What seemed like an innocuous comment during oral arguments on October 3rd, 1994 by Richard Seamon, attorney for the Department of Justice in the case of United States v. Shabani led to lengthy retort. Seamon, prepared to end the arguments stated, “Unless the Court has further questions, I have nothing further.” Justice Breyer in his…
Public Support for the Supreme Court Through the Lens of Political Science
Studies have historically highlighted longitudinal continuity in public support for the Supreme Court as an institution – even in the aftermath of particularly divisive decisions. These trends have eroded as of late, with Independents and Democratic-leaning voters increasingly likely to relay disapproval of the Court’s decision-making. This article serves to frame these developments in a…
And We’re Off to the Races
If you feel like the 2022 Supreme Court Term just ended you are not alone. The justices began this term much like where they left off in June 2023 — with the October argument session of the 2023 Term now complete and six oral arguments already under the justices’ belts we are seeing similar variation in…
Taking the Fifth
There are several things that are true about the Fifth Circuit. This includes the six cases from the Fifth Circuit that are already granted for argument before the Supreme Court this term, the most from any circuit so far. It also includes the six judges that former President Trump appointed to the Circuit. Then there…
Citing Down the Ladder
One of if not the most well-known sentences from a Supreme Court opinion comes in the form of John Marshall’s line in Marbury v. Madison, “It is emphatically the duty of the Judicial Department to say what the law is.” This short sentence signified a power grab whereby the Supreme Court took on judicial review…
Two Pieces to the Puzzle: Long Conference Petitions and Granted Cases for OT 2023
[completed with the help of Jake Truscott who gathered data for this post] The 2022 Supreme Court term concluded this past June. Since then, the Justices have been on break. In the past several justices go on vacation (some of the downsides to such travel have been documented as well) while others teach in exciting…
I’m Still Standing
What ingredients come to mind when you think of cases before the Supreme Court? One might opine controversial issues or high stakes litigation. At a case level one might say circuit splits or elite attorneys. Still, there are more elementary components of litigation mentioned in Article III and they start with a case or controversy. …
The Supreme Court: Where Everyone Knows Your Name
At any level of legal jurisdiction, the American court system tends to operate as a system of working groups. That is, even as particular litigants and litigation are constantly changing, a core group of actors – i.e., judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys – tend to retain a consistent presence in the courtroom. The Supreme Court…
Supreme Court Justice Power Index at the End of the 2022 Term
Who is the powerful Supreme Court Justice on the current Court? This question, while interesting to think about, leads to several subsequent questions, primarily to do with what is meant by “powerful.” The vagueness with which we define power leads to a near impossibility in coming up with a legitimate and valid answer. Other studies…
Where We Are at the End of the Supreme Court’s 2022 Term
Recently there has been quite a bit of discussion on social media and in the press regarding inferences we can make from data on Supreme Court Justices’ behavior. One critique raised was that levels of unanimity do not show that the Court is necessarily moving to the left or to the right as a unit…
Another One Bites the Dust: End of 2022/2023 Supreme Court Term Statistics
[This piece was co-authored by Jake Truscott, a Post-Doctoral Researcher for C-SPAN Scholarship and Engagement] It has been another crazy year before the Supreme Court as the justices took up important cases related to Affirmative Action, student debt, voting, and religious rights among other issues. The justices decided several of these important cases along ideological…
The Highest Cites in the Land
The Supreme Court is known as the “Highest Court in the Land,” but even this highest court needs to justify its choices. Scholar Martin Shapiro referred to this universal judicial norm as part of the logic of the triad. Under this logic, judges maintain a system of trust with the public by providing seemingly neutral…
Term Update: We Haven’t Seen This in Over 25 Years
So far this term the liberal justices on the Supreme Court only have a combined four dissents through 26 argued and signed decisions. That is about a 5% dissent rate. For some perspective, the Court released 26 signed decisions in argued cases through May of last term. By that point the liberal justices accumulated 26…
What’s Going on So Far This Term
It is ironic that we can consider May in a Supreme Court Term early when the term is set to complete in just one month, but that is exactly where we are. The justices have cleared 19 cases from their caseload (18 if we discount In Re: Grand Jury which was dismissed after oral argument)…
A New Landscape Unfolds: Supreme Court Oral Arguments in the 2022-2023 Term
In a term marked by arguments flowing past their allotted times, the justices had quite a bit to say in the 2022-2023 oral argument sessions. Of course the justices could properly focus their energy on the paltry 59 cases for argument. That number is quite a far cry from 197 arguments the Court heard in…
Unusual Moves, a Slow Start, and What We Should Expect from the Remainder of the Term
April is the final month of oral arguments for the 2022-2023 Supreme Court Term and although the Court has released few decisions in orally argued cases, there are several storylines worth tracking. Beyond the slow pace of decisions, Justice Jackson is in her first term and has written the majority opinion in a single case,…
Even Best Friends Sometimes Disagree
Supreme Court Justices voting practices are fairly predictable. For instance, most decisions are unanimous. Since the longest serving justice on the Court, Justice Thomas joined the Court in 1991 42.65% of argued cases have returned unanimous votes. The Court also tends to reverse lower court decisions. The justices voted to reverse the lower court decision…
The Last Justice Standing
After the Supreme Court released its most recent set of decisions last Thursday, SCOTUSBlog’s James Romoser captured a unique insight of the justices’ votes so far – newly appointed Justice Jackson is the only justice so far who has been entirely in the majority in each of the Court’s six decisions. This was potentially surprising…
SCOTUS Predictions Based on Lower Court Judges
One of the best ways to forecast future events is through past trends. The U.S. Supreme Court hears the majority of its cases after a decision is rendered by one of the 13 federal courts of appeals. Since there are 13 circuits and the Supreme Court takes somewhere between 60 and 70 cases each term…
Two Decisions Down and Fifty-Eight to Go
The Supreme Court released two decisions on January 23 to kick off its merits opinion releases for this term. One was a unanimous decision in Arellano v. McDonough, a case about the effective date of an award of disability compensation to a veteran of the United States military which was authored by Justice Barret while…
Roberts Court Jurisprudence: What Was and What Will Come
What is the Supreme Court’s most important work? Although peoples’ answers may vary, one of the Court’s most important outputs is its opinion language. Through its precedent, the Court develops standards for people to follow and for lower courts to articulate in subsequent decisions. Precedent guides decision making from the top down and affects outcomes…
It’s Not Your Imagination — The Supreme Court is Less Efficient
The Supreme Court is now less efficient according to multiple measures. Since the Court released its first decision in an orally argued case this morning, Monday January 23rd 2023, the 112 days between the first oral argument and the first opinion of this term set a new record for the longest time this has ever…
A Tale of Two Presidents
On April 19, 2021 President Biden released his first slate of judicial nominees. Along with five district court nominees and two other appeals court nominees, Biden nominated (now) Justice Ketanji Jackson to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Jackson was confirmed to the D.C. Circuit on June 14, 2021 and less than a year later…
Why 2022 is Already a Term Like No Other
This is a historic year for the Supreme Court. After a second term with a conservative supermajority, the Court is once again positioned to make key decisions along ideological lines. While the Roberts Court will be remembered for its ideological splits and key decisions in the areas of individual rights and liberties, it will also…
Supremely Slow Out of the Gates
The Supreme Court has hit several lows in the last few years. It recently had the lowest number of decisions in over a century and it has significantly slowed down its pace of decision releases. It had set some new records as well including the highest rate of 6 to 3 decisions ever and the…
The SCOTUS Tortoise and the Hare
With nine justices on the Supreme Court, consensus among five justices is necessary for any successful voting coalition. Knowing this, there appears to be little incentive to vote alone. Solo votes don’t have the power to generate precedent and do not even foreshadow any likelihood of gaining more adherents to such a view among a…
How Oral Argument Data Back Up Expectations in the Court’s Affirmative Action Cases
Yesterday the Supreme Court heard the long-awaited oral arguments in cases that may overturn the right to affirmative action in higher education. Some states like Michigan already banned action through popular vote. For states that still allow it though the question of constitutionality is on the Court’s agenda. In Grutter v. Bollinger, decided in 2003,…
No Doppelgänger for Jackson
Justice Jackson is the first justice in recent times to enter a Court with a clear six justice bloc in the majority. Unfortunately (for her) she is in the minority of this grouping. In the first week of oral arguments this term Jackson more or less solidified her position on the left of the Court…
Empirical SCOTUS 