Dr. Adam Feldman

The Justices, Gender Equity, and Oral Arguments

Below is the abstract from my new article, Echoes from a Gendered Court: Examining the Justices’ Interactions During Supreme Court Oral Arguments, co-authored by Rebecca Gill: Supreme Court oral arguments are the only publicly scheduled opportunities for the Justices and advocates to directly engage in discussions about a case. There are few rules to regulate…

SCOTUS Nomination: Three Reasons to Suspect Gorsuch and One Reason to be Skeptical

Image via Associated Press Nothing is certain except death and taxes. There is no sure bet at the moment on who Donald Trump will nominate to the Supreme Court. Perhaps news will leak prior to the 8PM EST / 5PM PST announcement of the candidate tomorrow, January 31st 2017, which was recently bumped up from Thursday…

Bringing Cases in an Unusual Term: Top Petitioners and Cert Amici

There are certain criteria that indicate or signal the importance of a Supreme Court petition to the Court –experienced SCOTUS counsel on the cert briefs, federal governmental involvement, and cert stage amicus briefs – just to name a few. Although there is no surefire way to predict whether the Court will grant cert in a…

Supreme Court Review of The Short-Listers’ Decisions

With one day until his inauguration, President Elect Trump has yet to nominate a candidate for the vacant seat on the Supreme Court. While he initially released a list of twenty-one possible candidates for the vacancy, CBS’ Jan Crawford reports that the list of candidates may be furthered narrowed to five – including 11th Circuit Judge…

The Most Important Cases Already Argued This Term in SCOTUS

Over the last few years the Supreme Court has heard multiple landmark cases. The issues in these cases ranged from abortion to marriage equality and from affirmative action in schools to national healthcare. So far this Term the Court has not heard cases of the same magnitude. While cases like Beckles v. United States may…

Cert Analytics

The Supreme Court currently grants around eighty cases per year for its merits review. These cases tackle issues that often divide federal courts. The Court takes up some cases due to the national importance of resolving certain issues. With some of these cases that deal with issues that divide segments of the populations like abortion…

Amicus Oral Argument Participation Over Time

Amici regularly participate in Supreme Court oral arguments. Recently these appearances have been dominated by attorneys from the United States Office of the Solicitor General (OSG). While OSG attorneys have historically argued more cases as amici than other attorneys, there is much less diversity in the last decade. In fact, the bulk of non-OSG amici…

SCOTUS’ Slight Push Back at the End of 2016

Context By many metrics, and even by the Court’s standards, the Supreme Court has been quiet so far during the 2016 Term. While the Court has naturally taken fewer cases over recent years (exponentially fewer if we look back over the preceding decades), there is context for the most current muted effort. Much of the…

Profiling State Justices on Trump’s List of Possible SCOTUS Candidates

There is a world of difference between state and federal judges. Although both sets serve to perform the same general duty, much of this difference lies in the form of the relevant laws that they construe and interpret on a daily basis. Another source of difference comes in the form of how these judges reach…

What The Money Says About Federal Judges on Trump’s SCOTUS List

Money talks…or so the saying goes. This is especially true in the world of politics with multi-million dollar campaigns that could not survive without it. Federal judges, however, are unelected and so they do not run political campaigns that leave financial trails. Once on the bench, federal judges must preserve a sense of impartiality which…

Comparing Candidates for the Next United States Solicitor General

Eleven possibilities for the next Solicitor General of the United States. There are in fact many more possible candidates although the eleven names produced in two articles – one by Tony Mauro of the National Law Journal and another by David Lat, managing editor of Above the Law provide an ample source of talented lawyers…

Four Takeaways From this Term’s 2016 SCOTUS Oral Arguments

We are experiencing a changing of the guard in the Supreme Court. There has been an usually long period with an eight-Justice dynamic which will very possibly continue on through the end of the Court’s current Term. Without some unprecedented occurrence, President-Elect Trump will nominate the next Justice to the Supreme Court who will likely…