A seemingly innocuous Supreme Court case in 2017 looking at the narrow issue of time bars in class action lawsuits saw two giants of Supreme Court advocacy duke it out before the nine justices. California Public Employees’ Retirement System v. ANZ Securities pit Tom Goldstein of then-named Goldstein and Russell for the Petitioner CALPERS against…
Tag: Gregory Garre
The Supreme Court: Where Everyone Knows Your Name
At any level of legal jurisdiction, the American court system tends to operate as a system of working groups. That is, even as particular litigants and litigation are constantly changing, a core group of actors – i.e., judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys – tend to retain a consistent presence in the courtroom. The Supreme Court…
To Extend or Not to Extend
Occasionally someone will posit a question about Supreme Court practice to me dealing with an issue I haven’t examined. Recently, I had one such interaction with John Elwood of Vinson & Elkins. John asked if I had looked at applications for extensions of time to file petitions for writs of certiorari. As I hadn’t looked…
When Opposites Attract Ideology Falls to the Wayside
Lots of noise is made about partisan and ideological divides on the Supreme Court. There tends to be less hubbub surrounding instances when justices that traditionally divide ideologically, vote together. Such surprising coalitions formed in the majority and dissent for the Court’s decision in last week’s Patchak v. Zinke ruling. Although this decision was met with only…
Attorneys in the Clutch
Earlier this year I ran a blog post on the most powerful justices across time, which focused on their decisions in cases with single vote margin majorities. That post accounted for the decision makers, but it did not consider the attorneys whose arguments factor into the justices’ decision calculi. This post takes a look at…
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…
Oral Arguments OT 2015: A Look Back
On Wednesday April 29th the Supreme Court Justices heard their final oral argument of the Term with McDonnell v. United States. The Justices heard a total of 69 arguments from October 2015 through April 2016 (not accounting separately for consolidated dockets; links to all of the transcripts, audio, and information about all of the cases…
Empirical SCOTUS 