Now that the Supreme Court term is over, let the scoring begin. While this post looks at the most successful firms, litigators, and groups before the Supreme Court during the 2016 term, there are several caveats to note. First, this post looks at success before the Court as measured by win counts. Second, getting to…
Month: June 2017
That’s a SCOTUS Wrap
This term helped define what the Supreme Court may look like moving forward (of course discounting the possibility of other upcoming vacancies). With Justice Gorsuch’s seemingly conservative stances we appear to be moving back into a similar territory that existed with Justice Scalia on the Court. Although the orally argued cases this term were not…
Justice Gorsuch: What We Know and What We Should Expect
Justice Gorsuch is just over two months into his tenure on the Supreme Court. There are many unknowns regarding how he will judge at this level. The cases he will decide on the Supreme Court are predominately different from those he saw on the 10th Circuit. There is also an intuition that circuit court judges’…
A New Way of Defining Oral Argument Terrain
Oral arguments are one of the more empirically studied areas of Supreme Court decision making. This may make intuitive sense. Oral arguments are one of the few moments where the justices’ decision making process transpires before members of the public. Audio of these arguments is recorded and accessible to anyone with an internet connection. Video…well…
Gorsuch’s First Majority Opinion and Some Comparisons
This post contains information on the split votes in the Roberts Court Justices’ first decisions’, the days between oral argument and their first decisions, and the lower court that ruled prior to the Supreme Court in each decision. Of the justices on the Court (and Justice Scalia), three had non-unanimous first opinions. Ginsburg had the…
Highly Citable
Attorneys before the Supreme Court have multiple goals. Whether the ultimate goal is winning a case, affecting public policy, or testing the constitutionality of a piece of legislation, good counsel get the justices’ attention. How they get the justices’ attention varies. Some engender attention through their regular experience before the Court while others through the…
SCOTUS Opinion Stats: 6/5/2017
This week Justice Gorsuch participated in three of the five opinions – Kokesh, Honeycutt, and Laroe. He has yet to write an opinion. Justice Kagan once again has the lengthiest decision with the majority in Advocate Health. Advocate was also the only decision with a separate opinion as Justice Sotomayor wrote a concurrence. Links to the…
A Ban The Court Would Love to Avoid
On June 1, the Trump Administration filed its application to stay the Fourth Circuit’s preliminary injunction against the attempted travel ban and petition for cert in the case. While this is only the Supreme Court’s first potential entry point into this dispute, it marks an opportunity for the Court to rule on a central item…
Why Justice Kennedy May Not Leave The Court Right Now
The Supreme Court is not an institution with regular turnover. Since the Justices have life tenure, many stay on well into old age and often for decades. The Justices are insulated in their positions for life and there is little incentive to move to other jobs. In fact, the last Justice to leave the Court…
Empirical SCOTUS 