Something is clearly different this Supreme Court term after only two weeks of oral arguments. There is a chippiness in the air that wasn’t overtly present before. The distinction between the left and the right of the Court is still in play, but newly appointed Justice Jackson has had control of the proceedings far more…
Tag: Justice Breyer
What to Expect from Justice Breyer’s Retirement and Judge Jackson’s (Presumptive) Confirmation to the Court
Now that Senator Manchin declared he will vote to confirm Judge Jackson to the Supreme Court, Jackson’s confirmation in a week or so is all but a foregone conclusion. Will Jackson usher in a new era of judging on the Court? This outcome is very unlikely. The Court now has six conservative, republican nominated justices…
Justice Breyer’s Legacy In Numbers
Much of the Supreme Court landscape has changed since Justice Breyer joined the Supreme Court in 1994. Breyer is currently the second longest-tenured justice on the Court after Justice Thomas. The ideological balance has changed from a 5-4 conservative/liberal composition with the occasional swing vote from Justice Kennedy in the middle. With the three Trump-appointed…
Supreme Workhorses
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…
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 Strategic Right – Oral Arguments at the Beginning of the 2017 Term
Several possible facets of the justices’ new oral argument strategies became apparent during the first week of oral arguments for the 2017 Supreme Court term. The Court began with a series of high-profile cases – perhaps none as discussed and hotly contested as Gill v. Whitford which looks at gerrymandered voting districts in Wisconsin. The…
The Justices in Oral Arguments 2016
Supreme Court oral arguments are the only times that litigators directly and verbally interact with the Justices about pending cases. The scholarship on whether these arguments factor into decision outcomes is mixed with some suggesting that the Justices come into oral arguments with predefined views in most cases while others suggesting that a variety of…
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