Occasionally someone will posit a question about Supreme Court practice to me dealing with an issue I haven’t examined. Recently, I had one such interaction with John Elwood of Vinson & Elkins. John asked if I had looked at applications for extensions of time to file petitions for writs of certiorari. As I hadn’t looked…
Month: April 2018
Not All Appeals Are Equal
Every year the lawyer research and ranking company Chambers & Partners (sometimes mentioned as C&P herein) puts out a list of top appellate lawyers and firms (in a previous post I looked at some of the listed firms’ cert performance). Chambers uses a mix of qualitative and quantitative methodology to come up with its various…
How Gorsuch’s First Year Compares
In 1986 when Justice Scalia joined the Supreme Court, the bench looked quite different than it does today. In fact, none of the justices on that Court still sit on the Supreme Court as Scalia was the final holdout. In 1986 the Court was composed of five justices who were predominately ideologically conservative and four…
An Opinion is Worth at Least 1,000 Words
Supreme Court opinions come in all different shapes and sizes. Some are short and sweet, others are dense, long, and hard to follow. Some reasons behind relative opinion length are obvious. Even though the justices tend not to grant cases with facile solutions, certain cases are more complex and involve extensive fact patterns. Along with…
Empirical SCOTUS 