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…
Signs of a Gridlocked SCOTUS
Congress has historically low levels of public approval. Current Gallup Polls place Congress’ approval rating at around 18%. The Supreme Court’s approval rating tends to hover much higher – generally around the 50% level. One reason for this disparity is from sense that the Supreme Court does not engage in politics in the manner of other…
The Next Justice – In The Candidates’ Own Words
AP Photos / Charlie Neibergall / Matt Rourke The Supreme Court. A Major Election Concern? In this presidential election season the Supreme Court vacancy left by Justice Scalia has become a hot-button issue central to every campaign. Take Hillary Clinton’s comment during April 14’s Democratic Debate (which I will return to later): “You know, there…
Lessons In Not Throwing Caution To the Wind
It seems a fitting tribute to include a post about the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) on the day the current Solicitor General, Donald Verrilli, steps down. The OSG is one of main gatekeepers to the Supreme Court’s review. Multiple times every Term the Justices request the OSG to express views on whether or…
Ideological or Individual Rifts: Justice Thomas at the Edge of the Court
There is and has been a clear ideological division between the more conservative and liberal Justices on the Court, especially in cases with high profile civil rights issues such as marriage equality. A not so often examined aspect of this fissure has to do with the cohesion of the individual voting blocs. For instance, Justice…
Interruptions and References
Supreme Court oral arguments are traditionally thought of as a time for the Justices to interact with and ask question of attorneys in a case. One of the lesser thought of aspects of oral arguments has to do with the interaction among the Justices. Over the years several studies and articles have looked at this…
Will Ghosts of Past Decisions Come Back to Haunt This Term?
Do Supreme Court Justices abide by the Court’s past precedents in cases where such precedents are not overruled? Political Scientists have long debated this question with differing accounts based on ideological theory, strategic theory, and post-behavioralism. Without getting lost in the weeds of this debate this post takes a look at the Justices’ votes in…
Peering Into Merrick Garland
If there’s one thing that can be said about the current Supreme Court vacancy, it is that it will not likely be filled anytime soon. Judge Garland has sat on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals since 1997 and has been the Chief Judge on the Circuit since 2013. With the benefit of time and the…
The Road to Zubik, Incoherence, and Indecision
Today the Court avoided ruling on the merits in Zubik v. Burwell, a case pitting religious beliefs against government healthcare mandates, by sending the case back down to the lower courts with a per-curiam opinion. This was one of the most anticipated rulings of the Term and so this decision is perceived as a letdown for…
The Most Effective Friends of the Court
Amicus curiae briefs abound in the U.S. Supreme Court. The rules on filing are sufficiently loose that almost anyone with the necessary funds and that is able to follow the proper filing procedures can file an amicus brief. According to Justice Ginsburg these briefs along with other secondary sources can aid the Court in its…
OT 2015 Case Origination
(image from USCourts.gov) This post looks at the sources of the cases the Supreme Court heard this Term. It has two sections (divided into tables). The first contains each case (following SCOTUSBlog’s list of cases for the term) with four columns of data: the lower court, the lower court’s authoring judge’s name, any dissenting judges that…
The State of the States Before the Supreme Court
The Supreme Court Justices never appeared less satisfied with responses during an oral argument this Term than they did with those in Birchfield v. North Dakota. Mark Joseph Stern described in an article for Slate, “Ever wondered what it felt like on the Titanic when that iceberg ripped the hull? The sensation, I suspect, was quite similar…
Empirical SCOTUS 