There are several things that are true about the Fifth Circuit. This includes the six cases from the Fifth Circuit that are already granted for argument before the Supreme Court this term, the most from any circuit so far. It also includes the six judges that former President Trump appointed to the Circuit. Then there…
Author: Dr. Adam Feldman
Ph.D. University of Southern California, Political Science
J.D., University of California, Berkeley (Boalt Hall)
Citing Down the Ladder
One of if not the most well-known sentences from a Supreme Court opinion comes in the form of John Marshall’s line in Marbury v. Madison, “It is emphatically the duty of the Judicial Department to say what the law is.” This short sentence signified a power grab whereby the Supreme Court took on judicial review…
Two Pieces to the Puzzle: Long Conference Petitions and Granted Cases for OT 2023
[completed with the help of Jake Truscott who gathered data for this post] The 2022 Supreme Court term concluded this past June. Since then, the Justices have been on break. In the past several justices go on vacation (some of the downsides to such travel have been documented as well) while others teach in exciting…
I’m Still Standing
What ingredients come to mind when you think of cases before the Supreme Court? One might opine controversial issues or high stakes litigation. At a case level one might say circuit splits or elite attorneys. Still, there are more elementary components of litigation mentioned in Article III and they start with a case or controversy. …
Supreme Court Justice Power Index at the End of the 2022 Term
Who is the powerful Supreme Court Justice on the current Court? This question, while interesting to think about, leads to several subsequent questions, primarily to do with what is meant by “powerful.” The vagueness with which we define power leads to a near impossibility in coming up with a legitimate and valid answer. Other studies…
Where We Are at the End of the Supreme Court’s 2022 Term
Recently there has been quite a bit of discussion on social media and in the press regarding inferences we can make from data on Supreme Court Justices’ behavior. One critique raised was that levels of unanimity do not show that the Court is necessarily moving to the left or to the right as a unit…
Another One Bites the Dust: End of 2022/2023 Supreme Court Term Statistics
[This piece was co-authored by Jake Truscott, a Post-Doctoral Researcher for C-SPAN Scholarship and Engagement] It has been another crazy year before the Supreme Court as the justices took up important cases related to Affirmative Action, student debt, voting, and religious rights among other issues. The justices decided several of these important cases along ideological…
The Highest Cites in the Land
The Supreme Court is known as the “Highest Court in the Land,” but even this highest court needs to justify its choices. Scholar Martin Shapiro referred to this universal judicial norm as part of the logic of the triad. Under this logic, judges maintain a system of trust with the public by providing seemingly neutral…
Term Update: We Haven’t Seen This in Over 25 Years
So far this term the liberal justices on the Supreme Court only have a combined four dissents through 26 argued and signed decisions. That is about a 5% dissent rate. For some perspective, the Court released 26 signed decisions in argued cases through May of last term. By that point the liberal justices accumulated 26…
What’s Going on So Far This Term
It is ironic that we can consider May in a Supreme Court Term early when the term is set to complete in just one month, but that is exactly where we are. The justices have cleared 19 cases from their caseload (18 if we discount In Re: Grand Jury which was dismissed after oral argument)…
A New Landscape Unfolds: Supreme Court Oral Arguments in the 2022-2023 Term
In a term marked by arguments flowing past their allotted times, the justices had quite a bit to say in the 2022-2023 oral argument sessions. Of course the justices could properly focus their energy on the paltry 59 cases for argument. That number is quite a far cry from 197 arguments the Court heard in…
Unusual Moves, a Slow Start, and What We Should Expect from the Remainder of the Term
April is the final month of oral arguments for the 2022-2023 Supreme Court Term and although the Court has released few decisions in orally argued cases, there are several storylines worth tracking. Beyond the slow pace of decisions, Justice Jackson is in her first term and has written the majority opinion in a single case,…
Empirical SCOTUS 