A common refrain lately within circles interested in the Supreme Court has to do with the Court’s diminishing (or diminished) workload. The Court clearly has taken fewer cases in recent years than it did farther in the past. The 53 signed opinions by the Court for the 2019 term marked the lowest opinion total in…
Tag: Chief Justice Roberts
How Chief Justice Roberts Articulates His Ethos Through His Year End Reports
Chief Justice John Roberts released an impassioned Year End Report on December 31, 2019, which generated much commentary. The New York Times, for instance wrote about the Chief Justice’s calls for an independent federal judiciary. The Wall Street Journal examined Justice Roberts’ warnings against rumor and false information. These values inherent in the Chief’s report…
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…
Differences Between “Obama” and “Trump” Judges, While Sometimes Subtle, Can’t Be Denied
Justices of the Supreme Court rarely give public comments on words or actions of members of the elected branches of the federal government. This made the recent spat between Chief Justice John Roberts and President Donald Trump, when the two intrinsically debated the role of partisanship in the federal judiciary, all the more surprising and…
Don’t Cite Me Like That
An interesting debate was reignited by the Chief Justice’s majority opinion in Minnesota Voter’s Alliance v. Mansky. This debate surrounds the effect of oral arguments, if any, on the justices’ decisions. Here is one of the sections from Roberts’ majority opinion in that case that refers to oral arguments. In this example, as is the case…
A Seismic Shift?
It seems out of a script by the writers of the film Groundhog Day. At the end of the term each year Court watchers await the impending retirement of a justice. Stories break in the months before June trying to sort through the imperfect information concerning such retirement plans. In recent years, speculation of an…
The Court’s Recent Lack of Support for the Federal Government’s Agenda
This is the first of a series of two posts examining the federal government’s litigation in the Supreme Court. While this post looks at the last several terms of government litigation, the next will analyze the government’s upcoming cases. The federal government, through the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG), is the most frequent…
The Most Powerful Justices Across Time
Article III of the U.S. Constitution both limits the reach of the Supreme Court and at the same time gives the Justices great power. As the only branch of the federal government with life tenure, the judicial branch maneuvers oftentimes outside of public spotlight and so judges are not subject to the same public pressures…
Amicus Oral Argument Participation Over Time
Amici regularly participate in Supreme Court oral arguments. Recently these appearances have been dominated by attorneys from the United States Office of the Solicitor General (OSG). While OSG attorneys have historically argued more cases as amici than other attorneys, there is much less diversity in the last decade. In fact, the bulk of non-OSG amici…
Immediate Effect of the Election on the Court and the Justices
The Justices have languished for months with the uncertainty of who will fill the empty seat on the Court. This uncertainty will by no means end soon, but the impending election and the election itself may have had a cathartic effect on the Justices. There is now greater likelihood that the empty seat will be…
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