The Democrats are in a precarious position in the latest battle for a seat on the Supreme Court. Many Democrats oppose Kavanaugh’s nomination and will not vote to confirm him. Others are requesting that the Senate hold off on voting on Kavanaugh’s confirmation until the National Archives produces the record setting million or so pages…
Month: August 2018
Building a Merits Docket in 2018
The Supreme Court hears its first oral argument of the 2018 term on the first Monday in October (Monday October 1st). Before then, on September 24th, the justices will sit down to what is known as the “long conference” where the justices will review petitions for the first time since June. The number of petitions…
The Big Business Court
The current Supreme Court is unabashedly friendly towards big business. How friendly? If the Court’s trajectory continues, perhaps as friendly as any Court dating back to the Lochner-era where laissez-faire policies exuded from the Court’s rulings. Prominent scholars, most notably Epstein, Landes, and Posner found empirical support for the proposition that the current Court is more pro-business…
A Little Change Will Do You Good: Oral Argument Interruptions 2017
Although female justices have only served on the Supreme Court since 1981, a relatively short slice of the Court’s history, gender imbalances have existed in oral argument interruptions for many years with female justices bearing the brunt of them. These imbalances were identified in a blog post on Empirical SCOTUS with subsequent commentary from Stephanie…
Empirical SCOTUS 