One could make a colorable argument that SCOTUS cases decided by one vote are the most important decisions of the Court. One could also argue that unanimous opinions are either the most or least important decisions. Unanimous decisions require the cohesion of all of the justices from both sides of the ideological aisle. With such…
Tag: Justice Kagan
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…
Opinion Stats: Cooper v. Harris and Word Count Comparison for 5/22/2017
Cooper v. Harris Opinion Oral Argument Kagan Majority Sentences 718 Words 9826 Characters 49263 Syllables 15499 Polysyllables 1632 Words per sentence 13.685 Syllables per sentence 21.586 Syllables per word 1.577 Thomas Concurrence Sentences 20 Words 262 Characters 1246 Syllables 384 Polysyllables 43 Words per sentence 13.1 Syllables per sentence 19.2 Syllables per word 1.466 Alito…
A Shift in Oral Arguments: An Update
I recently wrote a post where I looked at Justice Scalia’s final ten oral arguments and compared them to the first ten oral arguments after his death. There have been several oral arguments since then and with the data from those arguments I am able to expand the timeframe of that analysis. In this post I examine…
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