With nine justices on the Supreme Court, consensus among five justices is necessary for any successful voting coalition. Knowing this, there appears to be little incentive to vote alone. Solo votes don’t have the power to generate precedent and do not even foreshadow any likelihood of gaining more adherents to such a view among a…
Tag: June Medical Services LLC v. Russo
A New Look at Who’s Activist and Restrained on the Court
This country’s founders could not have anticipated the current power of the federal judiciary. Alexander Hamilton wrote to this effect in Federalist Paper #78, “The judiciary, on the contrary, has no influence over either the sword or the purse; no direction either of the strength or of the wealth of the society; and can take…
Precedent: Which Justices Practice What They Preach
While Supreme Court Justices are by no means bound by their past decisions, the Court often respects its past decisions for a variety of reasons. The reasons given for adhering the Court’s past precedents are often across between cases. Justice Kagan offered her interpretation for remaining faithful to precedent in dissent in last term’s Knick…
Changes in Supreme Court Oral Argument Format: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly
With a week of telephonic Supreme Court oral arguments under the belt we now have meaningful data points to compare old style oral arguments with the new framework. These new arguments were not without mishaps, however, as both justices and attorneys attempted to navigate this new terrain. With the Supreme Court transcript data and audio…
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