Chief Justice John Roberts heralded the significance of one of the biggest cases from last term, Trump v. United States, with the words, “This case poses a question of lasting significance: When may a former President be prosecuted for official acts taken during his Presidency? Our Nation has never before needed an answer. But in…
Category: Amici
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…
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…
SCOTUS Petitions and Cases I’m Awaiting
The main mechanism by which parties send their cases to the Supreme Court for review is by cert petitions. With around 8,000 petitions each year from which the justices choose around 60-70 to hear on oral argument, the Court needs to find ways to quickly determine the most worthy cases. One of the ways the…
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…
April Week 1 in Review
Here are the mini-analyses I ran this week: Text Analysis of Thompson v. Clark (20-659) Below is an analysis from Thompson v. Clark (20-659) which was released this week. It was a 6-3 decision. First, here is a wordcloud (a visualization of the most dominant words used) of the majority opinion authored by Justice Kavanaugh…
A Sometimes-Forgotten Link: The Importance of State Court Cases Before SCOTUS
Supreme Court review is often thought of as mainly monitoring the federal courts and circuit splits. The reasons for this are obvious. Rule 10 of the Supreme Court Rules, the only (albeit non-compulsory) rule about what types of cases the Court should hear on cert, speaks about circuit splits before other types of cases. Surprising…
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…
About this Term: OT 2019
Even though not all briefs are filed in cases that will be argued before the Supreme Court this term, the interest level in the Court’s cases is at an apex. There was a lot of hype leading into this term, as it is the first where all nine sitting justices have at least a term…
A New Term With Plenty of Hype
This is going to be a big year in front of the Supreme Court. Likely with more fireworks than the last few. Since Justice Scalia passed away during the 2015 Supreme Court Term, the Court has been in an adjustment period. There was the long stint without a ninth justice. Justice Gorsuch was finally confirmed at the tail end of the 2016 term. At the end of his first full term in 2017 Justice Kennedy announced his retirement. This past term was Kavanaugh’s first term on the Court.
Hitting the Nail on the Head: Successful Cert Stage Amicus Briefs in Cases with Financial Implications
Not surprisingly, most cases before the Supreme Court involve high stakes. The justices can assure this by taking a small and selective caseload each term. With so many potential cases petitioned to the Court on such a wide range of issues, the Court really has the pick of the litter in terms of possible cases…
Follow the Experts: Framing Petitions for Cert
What do Supreme Court experts do differently in their cert petitions? Some insights in this post
Empirical SCOTUS 