Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association

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…

The First Batch of Decisions Each Term

Through the first thirty-five slip-opinions of the Supreme Court’s 2016 term there are notable similarities and differences from the Court’s prior terms. All decisions so far this term were determined by eight Justices or fewer as Justice Gorsuch has yet to sign on to a majority or separate slip-opinion (Beckles v. United States, for instance…

Forced Judicial Restraint

When, soon after his nomination to the Supreme Court, Judge Garland was praised for his judicial restraint, this praise was not envisioned for the type of impact Judge Garland’s nomination has made on the Court so far. Similarly, no one calling for judicial restraint or decrying the Court’s judicial activism prior to 2016 expected change to come in…

Inferences From Amicus Briefs and How Justice Kennedy Continues to Rule Supreme

This post analyzes the amicus filings from this past Term in three ways. First it looks at counts of cert stage amicus filings and compares them to merits stage filings. This difference show whether the interest in a case prior to the Court granting cert paralleled the interest in the case’s outcome on the merits. …

If You Can’t Beat ‘Em Block ‘Em: A Preface to a New Post-Scalia Court Strategy?

(images via supremecourt.gov) In the biggest cases this Supreme Court Term there was one common thread – the four Justices appointed by Democratic Presidents either voted together for the winning position or (likely) voted together to cause a 4-4 split (this was a potential strategy I discussed earlier). The numbers on the Court set up…

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…