Dr. Adam Feldman

Has The Supreme Court Turned a Liberal Tide?

The pieces are in place. With Justice Scalia’s death the liberals on the Court (both ideologically speaking and by virtue of their appointments by Democratic Presidents) are matched evenly with the Court’s conservatives for the first time in almost half a century. The last time a majority of Justices appointed by democrats sat on the…

The Justices’ Stances in United States v. Texas

The United States government represented by the Solicitor General is the most frequent party before the U.S. Supreme Court. These regular appearances will be quite pronounced over the next two weeks. The Supreme Court hears oral arguments in ten more cases before the end of the Term, and a representative from the Office of the Solicitor…

A Busy Year at the OSG

The United States Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) within the U.S. Department of Justice has its hands full with Supreme Court litigation. Granted, “busy” is a relative term as the OSG has had fewer Supreme Court filings this Term than it has since 2010 (which will almost assuredly still be the case at the end…

The Regulars: Supreme Court Litigation 2015-2016

Since 2001 the Supreme Court has written full opinions in 67-75 orally argued cases per Term. We are certain not to see more than 75 this Term and nowhere near the 151 such cases in the 1982 and 1983 Terms, which were high points for the second half of the 20th century. With fewer cases,…

The Biggest Supreme Court Cases of the Term

This Term the Supreme Court decided to tackle cases dealing with a variety of hot-button issues ranging from the right to an abortion (or more specifically the right for who can provide an abortion) to the meaning of “one person, one vote.” These issues affect a profound portion of the American populace. Correspondingly these cases often make headlines,…

Redistricting Precedent in Light of Evenwel

The Supreme Court decided Evenwel v. Abbott this week – a case with vast implications for legislative districts. Some see the decision as snubbing Republicans by ruling that states and localities should use total rather than voting population to draw these districts. Other commentary views the ruling as sufficiently narrow to allow future litigation in the same…

Zubik and the Free Exercise Context

(image via The Atlantic) One of the most anticipated decisions of the current Supreme Court Term is forthcoming in the case Zubik v. Burwell. Zubik follows in the footsteps of another recent case: Hobby Lobby v. Burwell, 134 S.Ct. 2751 (2014). Both cases deal with First Amendment challenges under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) to…

A Shift in Oral Arguments: An Update

I recently wrote a post where I looked at Justice Scalia’s final ten oral arguments and compared them to the first ten oral arguments after his death. There have been several oral arguments since then and with the data from those arguments I am able to expand the timeframe of that analysis. In this post I examine…

The First Nineteen

(image via Boston Globe) So far, this has been an odd and unique Supreme Court Term in several respects. For instance, Justices Thomas, Ginsburg, and Sotomayor all dissented in the same case (in DirecTV v. Imbrugia – Justice Thomas’ dissent was very different from Justice Ginsburg’s which Justice Sotomayor joined). We’ve had a Justice pass…

Friedrichs as a Per Curiam Decision

The Court released its decision today in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Assn. The decision which has garnered considerable attention is a single sentence reading: “The judgment is affirmed by an equally divided Court.” From this we know the Justices split 4-4 and so there was no precedential value to the ruling, and that by doing this the Court…

Justice Sotomayor Shaking Up Post-Scalia Oral Arguments

f (image via Los Angeles Times) It has been over a month since Justice Scalia, one of the most engaged Justices in oral arguments since he was confirmed to the Court in 1986, passed away on February 13, 2016. For all of the commentary surrounding his passing and on the questions surrounding the process of…

Atypical Oral Arguments In Puerto Rico v. Franklin CA Trust

On Tuesday the Court heard arguments in Puerto Rico v. Franklin Cal. Tax-Free Trust a case that examines whether Congress precluded Puerto Rico from the ability to restructure its public utility debt. Specifically the case looks at whether Chapter 9 of the Bankruptcy Code applies to Puerto Rico. Much of the case and the arguments…