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…
Category: 2021 Term
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…
SCOTUS Predictions Based on Lower Court Judges
One of the best ways to forecast future events is through past trends. The U.S. Supreme Court hears the majority of its cases after a decision is rendered by one of the 13 federal courts of appeals. Since there are 13 circuits and the Supreme Court takes somewhere between 60 and 70 cases each term…
Congressional Responses to Dobbs
The Supreme Court released its opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health on June 24, 2022. Within a little over a month of the release, a robust discussion developed within both Houses of Congress on whether there should be a legislative response to this decision. Congress is notorious for lots of discussion combined with little…
Many SCOTUS Friends with Ideological Interests in OT 2021
Less than one month ago the Supreme Court released its decision in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health overturning 50 years of precedent protecting the right to an abortion. 133 amicus curiae filed friend of the Court briefs on behalf of both sides of this issue. This represents the most amicus briefs filed…
6-3 is the new SCOTUS 5-4
What this means? The Court’s most common split vote this term was six justices in the majority and three justices in dissent. The most frequent six justices in the majority were the Court’s conservative justices and the most frequent in the dissent were the three liberal justices. Why this matters? The Court’s biggest cases came…
End of OT 2021 Hot Takes
Now that the term is over, what can we make of it? Was it really as bad for Justices Breyer, Kagan, and Sotomayor as some make it out to be? In some sense definitely. They were in dissent together in the biggest cases of the term — New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc….
Comparing The Draft and Final Opinions in Dobbs
The official opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health was released this morning. According to Jake Truscott it was the third-longest Supreme Court opinion since 1946 and the longest of this term by over 10,000 words (the second-longest so far was the NY Rifle opinion released two days prior). When Politico released the draft opinion…
Supreme Court End of Term Cheat Sheet
As the Supreme Court completes the final leg of the 2022 Term here is what we know and what we can expect as the justices grapple with cases surrounding several topics important to many Americans. This morning CNN released an article delving into these topics. (1) Here are the decisions released so far this month…
Ten Decisions (and One DIG) in June
Gorsuch and the Liberals The Supreme Court released five decisions on Monday with five more (and a DIG) coming out on Wednesday. These did not include the highly publicized decisions on guns, abortion, or border policy. The decision in Denezpi v. United States struck me as interesting based on the composition of the dissent with…
The Importance of Egbert v. Boule
The Court’s latest decision came on Wednesday when the justices ruled in Egbert v. Boule. 29 decisions remain before the end of the term. Why is this decision important? The case has quite far reaching implications by further limiting the scope of Bivens claims (this Court has already constrained Bivens application in previous decisions) against…
Ruling on the Second Amendment
Why is the Court’s 2nd Amendment decision this term such a huge deal? This would be the fourth time the Court reviews the constitutionality of a law under the Second Amendment since 1900 and the fifth time ever. Three of those four decisions including the present one will take place under the Roberts Court. The…
Empirical SCOTUS 