A regular yet often overlooked practice in the Supreme Court is the grant, vacate remand or GVR. A GVR is a summary disposition where, generally (although not always) based on a plenary decision, the Court grants certiorari in a case, vacates the lower court’s decision, and remands the case back to the lower court based…
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Quick Note: List of Counsel for Oct/Nov Argued SCOTUS Cases
This list includes counsel for the merits parties as covered in the Supreme Court dockets and so it does not exactly match and track all counsel set for arguments. In particular it does not cover arguing amici and it does contain parties’ attorneys of record even if they are not participating in oral arguments. For expanded…
Quick Note: SCOTUS Justices/Nominees’ Ages at Death
Perusing through some data for another post, I came across the age at death of all deceased Supreme Court nominees (those confirmed and not excluding Justice Scalia). The graph on the left shows all of the ages at death over time and the graph on the right shows the life expectancy trend based on the death…
A Tale of Two Constitutional Holdings
The Supreme Court held two state statutes unconstitutional during the the 2015 term*: portions of Florida’s death penalty law in Hurst v. Florida and Texas’ abortion statute in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt. While lower court rulings relate to the specific statute(s) dealt with in a case, these decisions have nationwide implications. The Court’s decisions have constitutional…
The Summer Pipeline
Supreme Court Justices make few official decisions during the summer. Generally, these relate to emergency matter that require quick injunctive responses. For lawyers, however, the situation is quite different (as the saying goes “time and tide wait for no man”). While the Court does not rule on cases during the summer, cert petitions accumulate just…
Quick Note: Supreme Court Stay Applications 2015/2016
The Supreme Court regularly receives applications to stay court orders or mandates pending possible upcoming decisions such as those on certiorari. Many of these requests are received from inmates on death row looking to stay executions. Several instances involve multiple applications based around the same underlying cases. Due to the interest in the stay recently granted in…
Research Corner: 7/15/2016
Three new works on the study of judicial behavior: Alma Cohen, Alon Klement & Zvika Neeman, Judicial Decision Making: A Dynamic Reputation Approach, J. Legal Stud. (2015) Examines “how judicial elections affect the incentives and decisions of judges” Lee Epstein, Some Thoughts on the Study of Judicial Behavior, 57 Wm. & Mary L. Rev….
SCOTUS Briefs: Opinions’ Basic Building Blocks
A Supreme Court opinion is a mixture of law, fact, and interpretation. By the time cases reach the Supreme Court, they amass a detailed record from the lower court(s) (except for the very few instances of original actions) and a large number of appellate filings. The case with the most amicus briefs on the merits…
Research Corner: 6/24/2016
Three more papers worth reading: The Changing Face of the Supreme Court by A.E. Dick Howard (University of Virginia School of Law) Note: A very nice descriptive look at the evolution of the Court along multiple dimensions since the Warren Court years. Inquiring Minds Want to Know: Do Justices Tip Their Hands with Questions at…
Quick Note: Dissents from Equally Divided Court
Today we had two more cases affirmed by equally divided Courts. These included the quite contentious immigration case of United States v. Texas. Surprisingly, no Justice dissented from either of today’s equal divisions. In fact, according to my count, no Justice has dissented from an equally divided Court in almost 50 years (Justice Roberts dissented in…
Research Corner 6/17/2016
New research tackling questions in the domains of Supreme Court Studies and Empirical Legal Research (1) “Systems Science and the Supreme Court“ by Alan Calnan (Southwestern Law School) Note: uniquely posits an alternative way to think through the current stalemate in the Supreme Court confirmation process (2) “Strategic Cooperation: Modeling Concurring Behavior on the U.S. Supreme…
A Growing Fracture in the Death Penalty
Under Chief Justice Roberts, the Supreme Court has revisited the issue of capital punishment on numerous occasions. Just in terms of overall cases, the Court has ruled on 23 since the beginning of the 2005 Term (habeas cases where the Court granted cert and ruled on the merits simultaneously are excluded from this count). These…
Empirical SCOTUS 