Supreme Court decisions tend to impact more than just the individuals named in a lawsuit. Supreme Court Rule 10, the one official written description of factors that may lead to a higher likelihood of a cert grant focuses primarily on areas with inconsistent court decisions across the country. One of the rationales behind this disparate…
Category: Votes
Changes Are Afoot: Evidence from 5-4 Decisions During the 2018 Term and What this Tells Us About the Supreme Court Moving Forward
Every year, SCOTUSBlog’s Stat Pack provides readers with an unparalleled look at the business of the Supreme Court across all of the merits cases it hears during a term. This year was no exception. The 2018 Term Stat Pack examines the details of the 67 cases the Court decided this term after oral argument as well…
A Wild Ride of a Term with Twenty Decisions Still to Go
The 2018 Supreme Court Term has taken many twists and turns, and there are still 20 decisions the Court has to release in its last week and a half of work before summer recess. Much may change between now and then, but with 55 cases already decided, we have unique and surprising patterns of decision-making among the justices. This is most apparent in the Court’s 5-4 (or 5-3) decisions, where one vote could shift a decision in a different direction.
So Happy Together
With many anticipated decisions still to come in the next month or so, the Supreme Court has already started to define itself in the post-Kennedy era. Certain patterns have emerged in the justices’ voting that distinguish this Court from past Courts. We are also beginning to see how the newest justices and Trump appointees —…
Advocates that Drive the Justices’ Votes
Supreme Court scholars often debate the role of lawyers in Supreme Court decision making. For an attitudinalist, the justices’ preferences make all (or at least most of) the difference. According to this theory justices will often vote based on their preferred policy direction, which minimizes the role of advocacy. More recent studies show that such…
Is the Court Tracking Right or Roberts Left?
While Supreme Court Justices’ votes are not purely the product of ideological preferences, some of the most important cases the justices decide come down to 5-4 splits along ideological lines. This was especially apparent during the 2017 Supreme Court term. Even though Chief Justice Roberts was in the conservative camp for many of these split…
Who’s in the Majority?
While few people ever have the opportunity of sitting on the Supreme Court, some similarities exist between this upper echelon of judging and other jobs. One parallel has to do with job satisfaction. While judges that make it all the way to the Supreme Court should feel accomplished and contented by their achievements, there also…
Amid Record-Breaking Consensus the Justices’ Divisions Still Run Deep
How divided is the current Supreme Court? On the surface the answer appears mixed. Much conversation over from the past several years surrounding the Court’s decisions has had to do with partisan and ideological divisions among the justices. These divisions and the Court’s rightward shift appear a reality as evidenced by the systematic victories of…
The Big Business Court
The current Supreme Court is unabashedly friendly towards big business. How friendly? If the Court’s trajectory continues, perhaps as friendly as any Court dating back to the Lochner-era where laissez-faire policies exuded from the Court’s rulings. Prominent scholars, most notably Epstein, Landes, and Posner found empirical support for the proposition that the current Court is more pro-business…
Much Ado About Nothing?
Today the Supreme Court decided the seemingly innocuous case of Hawkins v. Community Bank of Raymore. This case dealt with the liability of spousal guarantors under the Equal Credit Opportunity Act. On any other day this ruling might have gone unnoticed. The decision is one line reading, “The judgment is affirmed by an equally divided…
The Breyer Court? (Network Analysis of the Justices Votes in OT 2014)
In political science ideal points are the most common measure describing judges’ votes. The goal of ideal points in the study of courts is locating the relative political ideology of a judge on a scale of liberal to conservative. Of course what it actually means to be a conservative or liberal judge is somewhat contested….
empiricalscotus.com 