For 11 years between 1994 and 2005 there was no turnover in membership on the Supreme Court. There were four changes to the Court’s composition between 2005 and 2010 and then another four changes between 2017 and 2022. Of the four newest justices on the Court, three were appointed by President Trump and one by…
Author: Dr. Adam Feldman
Ph.D. University of Southern California, Political Science
J.D., University of California, Berkeley (Boalt Hall)
Using Network Analysis to Gauge the Justices’ Relative Importance in Oral Arguments
Anecdotes and research support the notion that oral arguments do not often influence case outcomes. Chief Justice John Roberts said as much in an interview with Bryan Garner for the Scribes Journal in 2010: “The oral argument is the tip of the iceberg — the most visible part of the process — but the briefs…
What Oral Argument Engagement Tells Us About Supreme Court Opinion Writing
Between the 2004 and 2019 Supreme Court Terms, Justice Thomas spoke in five oral arguments for a total of fewer than 200 words. In that window of time he chose not to speak in over 1,100 arguments. In that same timeframe, Justice Breyer spoke over 320,000 words at oral argument. During those same years, Justice…
Are the Justices’ Opinions Emotionally Charged and Does it Matter?
A Sunday morning article in the New York Times begins, “Last February, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. sent his eight Supreme Court colleagues a confidential memo that radiated frustration and certainty [referring to the D.C. Circuit’s decision in the Donald Trump immunity case].” The article continues describing Roberts’ Feb. 22nd memo to the justices,…
Searching for the Best Opinions: Text Analyses from the 2023/2024 SCOTUS Term
When lawyers think about legal writing, they tend to focus on their submissions to courts. Some of my work shows that writing quality matters from trial courts on up. Lawyers aren’t the only court actors who care about their legal writing though. Lawrence Baum and others (including Judge Posner) have looked at judicial writings and…
Which Justice Writes the Most Important Decisions on the Supreme Court?
Chief Justice John Roberts heralded the significance of one of the biggest cases from last term, Trump v. United States, with the words, “This case poses a question of lasting significance: When may a former President be prosecuted for official acts taken during his Presidency? Our Nation has never before needed an answer. But in…
When the Stars Don’t Align for Justices Kavanaugh and Roberts
In an almost declaratory manner as he singularly conveys on the Court, Chief Justice John Roberts expounded in the majority opinion in Trump v. United States, “[t]his case is the first criminal prosecution in our Nation’s history of a former President for actions taken during his Presidency…Doing so requires careful assessment of the scope of…
Amicus Citations in OT 2022 and 2023
On January 24, 2022 the United States Supreme Court granted cert in consolidated cases reviewing affirmative action programs at both Harvard and North Carolina Universities along with the Court’s precedent upholding affirmative action programs from the 2003 case Grutter v. Bollinger. By August of 2022, nearly 100 groups and individuals filed amicus briefs covering a…
Working Overtime
Supreme Court Justices have limited mandatory writing duties. Most of the justices are assigned majority opinions to draft. A few justices assign the majority opinion writing duties. This assignment is made by the Chief Justice if he is in the majority and otherwise by the most senior associate justice in the majority. Obviously a justice…
2023 Stat Review
Version: 1.1Released: July 1, 2024Citation: Feldman, A. & Truscott, J.S. (2024, July 1). Supreme Court 2023-2024 Stat Review (Version1.1). EmpiricalSCOTUS. Available at: https://empiricalscotus.com/Supplemental Data (.zip): HereUpdate Note (07/02/2024): Thank You to Josh Blackman for recognizing our miscoding of Campos-Chavez v. Garland. This and corresponding summary statistics have been updated. It feels like much longer than…
DELIA – From Empirical Data to an Operational Platform
This year’s SCOTUS term will have a huge impact on the practice of law, new litigation, and the data needed by the existing attorneys to present their cases. For example, the SEC v. Jarkesy decision upends the way the SEC (and potentially several other agencies) enforce their actions. The fall of Chevron with Loper Bright…
Moody v. NetChoice, LLC: New Dimensions of First Amendment Jurisprudence
As we all await the decision on Moody v NetChoice, we ran the oral argument and the transcript against our Optimized Legal Audio (OLA) platform to see what it ascertained about the justices’ leanings. The conclusions show possible surprises that appear consistent with our suppositions of votes in other cases yet to be decided. To…
Empirical SCOTUS 