Writing Style is clearly important to the Supreme Court Justices. Not only are the justices cognizant of the writing styles in briefs, but they are also attuned to the writing styles of other judges and justices. Justices past and present discussed this and other matters in interviews with legal writing specialist Bryan Garner for the…
Category: 2023 Term
Are the Justices’ Opinions Emotionally Charged and Does it Matter?
A Sunday morning article in the New York Times begins, “Last February, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. sent his eight Supreme Court colleagues a confidential memo that radiated frustration and certainty [referring to the D.C. Circuit’s decision in the Donald Trump immunity case].” The article continues describing Roberts’ Feb. 22nd memo to the justices,…
Searching for the Best Opinions: Text Analyses from the 2023/2024 SCOTUS Term
When lawyers think about legal writing, they tend to focus on their submissions to courts. Some of my work shows that writing quality matters from trial courts on up. Lawyers aren’t the only court actors who care about their legal writing though. Lawrence Baum and others (including Judge Posner) have looked at judicial writings and…
Amicus Citations in OT 2022 and 2023
On January 24, 2022 the United States Supreme Court granted cert in consolidated cases reviewing affirmative action programs at both Harvard and North Carolina Universities along with the Court’s precedent upholding affirmative action programs from the 2003 case Grutter v. Bollinger. By August of 2022, nearly 100 groups and individuals filed amicus briefs covering a…
Working Overtime
Supreme Court Justices have limited mandatory writing duties. Most of the justices are assigned majority opinions to draft. A few justices assign the majority opinion writing duties. This assignment is made by the Chief Justice if he is in the majority and otherwise by the most senior associate justice in the majority. Obviously a justice…
2023 Stat Review
Version: 1.1Released: July 1, 2024Citation: Feldman, A. & Truscott, J.S. (2024, July 1). Supreme Court 2023-2024 Stat Review (Version1.1). EmpiricalSCOTUS. Available at: https://empiricalscotus.com/Supplemental Data (.zip): HereUpdate Note (07/02/2024): Thank You to Josh Blackman for recognizing our miscoding of Campos-Chavez v. Garland. This and corresponding summary statistics have been updated. It feels like much longer than…
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…
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…
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…
Taking the Fifth
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…
Empirical SCOTUS 