Rather than originating from a federal court of appeal like the majority of cases before the Supreme Court, the most discussed case of this term came from a state court. Masterpiece Cakeshop was petitioned to the Supreme Court after a decision from the Colorado Court of Appeals and Colorado’s Solicitor General, Frederick Yarger, handled the argument for…
Category: Attorneys/Firms
Not All Appeals Are Equal
Every year the lawyer research and ranking company Chambers & Partners (sometimes mentioned as C&P herein) puts out a list of top appellate lawyers and firms (in a previous post I looked at some of the listed firms’ cert performance). Chambers uses a mix of qualitative and quantitative methodology to come up with its various…
BriefCatching 2017 Cert-Stage Filings
Good writing quality is one of the greatest assets for attorneys practicing before any court. While there is no universally accepted measure of good writing, software engineers are currently designing programs that measure writing quality in innovative and accurate ways. In past, Empirical SCOTUS has employed off-the-shelf metrics for writing quality to compare filings…
When Opposites Attract Ideology Falls to the Wayside
Lots of noise is made about partisan and ideological divides on the Supreme Court. There tends to be less hubbub surrounding instances when justices that traditionally divide ideologically, vote together. Such surprising coalitions formed in the majority and dissent for the Court’s decision in last week’s Patchak v. Zinke ruling. Although this decision was met with only…
Amicus Policy Success in Impactful Supreme Court Decisions
Perhaps the biggest development in the modern Supreme Court alongside the great discretion the justices now have in dictating the cases they hear is the role of interest groups. Over the past several decades the Supreme Court has increasingly become the forum for such groups and their attempts at persuasion; the object of persuasion being…
Supreme Court Movers and Shakers (Attorneys and Justices)
The consequences of certain decisions have repercussions far beyond those that affect the immediate cases. While this is an indisputable aspect of decisions from courts of last resort, prognosticating the potential consequences of decisions is an art fraught with questionable inferences. In a series of decisions the Supreme Court has a substantial policy impact. These…
A Chicken and Egg Problem
One of the more difficult questions facing Supreme Court scholars is trying to decipher the impact of the litigants. Given the secrecy with which the Supreme Court conducts the majority of its business, any effort towards understanding the decision making process is inevitably met with frustration. The most recent insight we have into any of…
The Invitation List
On January 18th, the Supreme Court released a short order requesting O’Melveny & Myers attorney Anton Metlitsky brief and argue the case of Lucia v. SEC supporting the decision below. The case examines whether administrative law judges of the Securities and Exchange Commission are officers of the United States within the meaning of the appointments clause….
A Lot at Stake: Amicus Filers 2017/2018
Whether they know it or not, large sectors of the population have interests in the outcomes of Supreme Court cases. With cases dealing with issues ranging from voting rights to owner’s rights in retail sales, many people are affected outside of the immediate parties to each case. These diverse interests along with more specific interests…
Looking Back to Make Sense of the Court’s (Relatively) Light Workload
There have been interesting discussions as of late regarding the Supreme Court’s light workload and how it is getting even lighter. Evidence of this decline can be found in quantitative analyses of the Supreme Court’s work. It is a not a subject addressed by any member of the Court. The Chief Justice, for example, did mention…
A New Era in SCOTUS Textualism
Legal interpretation begins with a legal text. At least in theory it does. While in practice this is not always the case, textualism has become synonymous with conservatism in recent Court eras primarily due to Justice Scalia’s reliance on the language of statutory texts. In practice, a textualist approach is not limited by judicial ideology and…
The Next Nominee to the Supreme Court
For all of the criticism the Trump Administration has received in recent weeks and months, one thing that Republicans almost universally agree upon is that President Trump has done well in reshaping the federal judiciary. This distinction even led to the genesis of stress balls with the caption “But Gorsuch!” distributed at the most recent Federalist…
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