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…
Tag: Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District
The Court’s Most Cited Decisions of 2016
One trope that was often repeated this past Supreme Court term was that the Court did not take on a particularly exciting caseload. Evidence for this comes in the form of the unprecedented level of agreement among the justices compounded by the eight justice composition for most of the term that wished to avoid 4-4…
Easy Reading (By Supreme Court Standards)
Supreme Court briefs are team efforts usually with a main coordinating partner/attorney who is known as the “counsel of record.” Although the number of attorneys staffing briefs varies, at the Supreme Court level the number of attorneys listed on the brief is often more than five and can be upwards of ten. This does not…
The Most Important Cases Already Argued This Term in SCOTUS
Over the last few years the Supreme Court has heard multiple landmark cases. The issues in these cases ranged from abortion to marriage equality and from affirmative action in schools to national healthcare. So far this Term the Court has not heard cases of the same magnitude. While cases like Beckles v. United States may…
Taking Stock: New Cases and an Emerging Picture of the Term
With the “long conference” before the beginning of the 2016 Supreme Court Term complete the Court has granted what could be the last set of cases before the Justices start hearing oral arguments next Tuesday (Oct. 4). The Court has two months of hearings scheduled with other cases still lacking oral argument dates. The Court’s…
The OSG and More Potential Cases for 2016
With the Supreme Court’s 2016 Term around the corner, there is nowhere near a full slate of cases for the Justices to hear. While the October and November hearing schedules were released and there are a handful of other granted cases without oral argument dates on the calendar, there are currently only approximately 29 cases (see SCOTUSBlog’s list…
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