A common refrain lately within circles interested in the Supreme Court has to do with the Court’s diminishing (or diminished) workload. The Court clearly has taken fewer cases in recent years than it did farther in the past. The 53 signed opinions by the Court for the 2019 term marked the lowest opinion total in…
Category: 2018 Term
Elites at Cert
The odds are stacked against attorneys seeking to have their cases heard by the Supreme Court. While attorneys working on cases accepted for review have a 50/50 chance of success on the merits, the average likelihood of a cert grant is around 1%. Certain attorneys though have a much higher success rate (also documented in…
Locating Weak Causal Strands in the Justices’ Opinions
In the introduction to the eye opening work on the Supreme Court certiorari process Deciding to Decide, author H.W. Perry summarizes the Court’s lack of institutional transparency. Perry wrote, “Although some rules are published, most of the internal procedures are by consensus, are unpublished, and are frequently unknown” (p. 17). Perry goes on, “We on…
Is Oral Argument Talking Time All It’s Cut Out to Be?
Supreme Court oral arguments are not all what they seem. While at first blush they may appear to be an opportunity for attorneys to make their arguments before the judges, they often become instances for the justices to test out their theories of a given case and to gauge other justices’ positions on given topics….
What the Justices Cited in OT 2018
During the 2018 term, the Supreme Court heard 67 oral arguments leading to decisions. The justices’ opinions cited briefs filed in these cases and law articles approximately 601 times. These citations were from a total of approximately 330 briefs and articles. The citations were primarily clustered in certain cases. For instance, 30 cases or about…
Changes Are Afoot: Evidence from 5-4 Decisions During the 2018 Term and What this Tells Us About the Supreme Court Moving Forward
Every year, SCOTUSBlog’s Stat Pack provides readers with an unparalleled look at the business of the Supreme Court across all of the merits cases it hears during a term. This year was no exception. The 2018 Term Stat Pack examines the details of the 67 cases the Court decided this term after oral argument as well…
261 Days to Gundy
Gundy v. United States was argued back on October 2, 2018. Since it was decided today, it took the justices 261 days since oral argument to render a judgment in the case. The main question in the case was whether the federal Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act’s (SORNA) delegation of authority to the attorney general…
A Wild Ride of a Term with Twenty Decisions Still to Go
The 2018 Supreme Court Term has taken many twists and turns, and there are still 20 decisions the Court has to release in its last week and a half of work before summer recess. Much may change between now and then, but with 55 cases already decided, we have unique and surprising patterns of decision-making among the justices. This is most apparent in the Court’s 5-4 (or 5-3) decisions, where one vote could shift a decision in a different direction.
Where We Stand at the Beginning of June
The Supreme Court released 44 slip opinions through the end of May of the current 2018 Supreme Court term (43 if we subtract our Emulex which the Court dismissed as improvidently granted). The majority of the decisions have been unanimous although a fair number were decided by 5-4 votes. Here is the count data for…
Thomas Authors Home Depot v. Jackson
Justice Thomas authored the majority opinion in Home Depot v. Jackson released this morning. There are several facets of this decision that are worth noting. It was a 5-4 decision with the more liberal justices — Ginsburg, Sotomayor, Kagan, and Breyer — in the majority and the other more conservative justices — Roberts, Alito, Gorsuch,…
So Happy Together
With many anticipated decisions still to come in the next month or so, the Supreme Court has already started to define itself in the post-Kennedy era. Certain patterns have emerged in the justices’ voting that distinguish this Court from past Courts. We are also beginning to see how the newest justices and Trump appointees —…
Competition to Speak During 2018 Supreme Court Oral Arguments
Oral arguments for the 2018 term are now complete. In a term where we have the potential to see heightened polarization on the Court like never before, oral arguments are impacted as well. One indicator of this harkens back to the previous term where all 5-4 decisions made across ideological lines ended in conservative victories. So…
empiricalscotus.com 