Dr. Adam Feldman

Concurrences Are All the Rage

Concurrences have played an increasingly important role in Supreme Court decision-making over time. They are nothing new though. Looking as far back as 1971’s landmark decision in New York Times v. United States, examining prior restraints on the press, we can see that along with the per curiam opinion, the justices authored six separate concurrences…

Generating Predictions for Grants Pass v. Johnson

The philosopher Archimedes once wrote “Give me a lever that is long enough and a fulcrum to place it on and I will move the world.” Is there a metaphor for the Court within this quote and if so do certain justices control a lever? In fact, we may find that the control or the…

The Most Harmony at the Beginning of a Term in the Modern Supreme Court

The Supreme Court has heard somewhere in the neighborhood of 60-70 oral arguments per term since Justice Kavanaugh joined the Court in the 2018 term. This is well more than 100 fewer arguments than the Court heard at the highest point of arguments per term around the first few decades of the 1900’s. That time…

Charting the Justices Decisions Cutting Across Ideological Lines

Supreme Court decisions come down to coalitions and are often predicated on the question of whether a justice can garner at least four additional other votes to support their position in a case. Sometimes these coalitions are easy to come by. The Court decides somewhere around 33% or more of its cases on average per…

Are the Justices Still Party Players

All Article III federal judgeships start at the same place — with a presidential nomination. This procedure played a large role in the first several decades of statistical studies of judicial behavior, where researchers found that the party of appointing president was a strong predictor of judicial votes. While not looked at as frequently anymore,…

The Circuit Barrage: The Justices’ Divergent Votes Based on Lower Courts

Introduction While few people would argue against the proposition that the Supreme Court Justices are some of the most intelligent legal luminaries in the United States, these luminaries often rule in opposing directions. The number of the Court’s split decisions often outnumber the number of unanimous decisions. During the 2021 Term, the number of 6-3…

Measuring Oral Arguments in the 2023/2024 Term

Some things from this year’s oral arguments are clear. We know for instance, who is talking more and less. These intricacies follow from what we saw last term. Justice Jackson is the most active justice in arguments. Thomas is the least. There are several aspects of oral argument that are below this playing field surface….

What’s the Holdup in OT 2023?

Last term was supposed to be different. The Court faced the leak of the Dobbs draft opinion in May of 2022 and all signs pointed at that point to the Court’s officers expending effort to attempt to prevent such an instance from recurring. This effort in deterrence potentially slowed the decision release process for the…

The Echo Chamber Grows

A seemingly innocuous Supreme Court case in 2017 looking at the narrow issue of time bars in class action lawsuits saw two giants of Supreme Court advocacy duke it out before the nine justices. California Public Employees’ Retirement System v. ANZ Securities pit Tom Goldstein of then-named Goldstein and Russell for the Petitioner CALPERS against…

Passing the Oral Argument Torch

What seemed like an innocuous comment during oral arguments on October 3rd, 1994 by Richard Seamon, attorney for the Department of Justice in the case of United States v. Shabani led to lengthy retort. Seamon, prepared to end the arguments stated, “Unless the Court has further questions, I have nothing further.” Justice Breyer in his…

And We’re Off to the Races

If you feel like the 2022 Supreme Court Term just ended you are not alone. The justices began this term much like where they left off in June 2023 — with the October argument session of the 2023 Term now complete and six oral arguments already under the justices’ belts we are seeing similar variation in…