The Supreme Court may be on summer recess but that doesn’t mean the justices are free from work-related obligations. Throughout the year some of the most significant decisions the justices make are performed unilaterally. The justices are each assigned to a certain geographic region associated with a judicial circuit or circuits and by virtue of…
Month: July 2017
Will the Trump Administration Receive Another Legal Blow When The Court Decides on the Travel Ban’s Constitutionality?
The Supreme Court already agreed to hear many significant cases in the fall 2017 term. Among these is one of the most important tests of executive power the Court has ever heard. This case, consolidated as Trump. v. International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP), involves the administration’s travel ban – specifically Executive Order No. 13780 –…
A Changing of the Guard? (Probably Not But the Evidence is Mixed)
In an article I wrote last year I found several Supreme Court repeat players were much more successful than others in getting the Supreme Court to hear their cases. Many of these “Elite Cert Attorneys” argue multiple cases each term before the justices. They all have high exposure to all aspects of Supreme Court process and…
Developing the Court’s Precedent 2016
Through the course of a single term, the Supreme Court went from a “boring” eight member body to one apparently itching to take on polarizing political issues. This transformation took place in the Court’s first full term without Justice Scalia since 1986. Some (including Justice Breyer) speculated that Scalia’s absence would have a large impact…
First-Timers in the Court
In recent years, a lot has been made of the repeat players before the U.S. Supreme Court – and rightfully so. They are involved in many high profile cases the justices hear, several have prior governmental experience…and they win. These attorneys include past-SG’s Seth Waxman, Ted Olson, and Paul Clement among others. An understudied but…
Empirical SCOTUS 