For 11 years between 1994 and 2005 there was no turnover in membership on the Supreme Court. There were four changes to the Court’s composition between 2005 and 2010 and then another four changes between 2017 and 2022. Of the four newest justices on the Court, three were appointed by President Trump and one by…
Tag: Justice Kavanaugh
When the Stars Don’t Align for Justices Kavanaugh and Roberts
In an almost declaratory manner as he singularly conveys on the Court, Chief Justice John Roberts expounded in the majority opinion in Trump v. United States, “[t]his case is the first criminal prosecution in our Nation’s history of a former President for actions taken during his Presidency…Doing so requires careful assessment of the scope of…
Even Best Friends Sometimes Disagree
Supreme Court Justices voting practices are fairly predictable. For instance, most decisions are unanimous. Since the longest serving justice on the Court, Justice Thomas joined the Court in 1991 42.65% of argued cases have returned unanimous votes. The Court also tends to reverse lower court decisions. The justices voted to reverse the lower court decision…
The Last Justice Standing
After the Supreme Court released its most recent set of decisions last Thursday, SCOTUSBlog’s James Romoser captured a unique insight of the justices’ votes so far – newly appointed Justice Jackson is the only justice so far who has been entirely in the majority in each of the Court’s six decisions. This was potentially surprising…
Two Decisions Down and Fifty-Eight to Go
The Supreme Court released two decisions on January 23 to kick off its merits opinion releases for this term. One was a unanimous decision in Arellano v. McDonough, a case about the effective date of an award of disability compensation to a veteran of the United States military which was authored by Justice Barret while…
Just the Stats: Ketanji Brown Jackson as a District Court Judge
This post has a bevy of statistics related to Judge Jackson’s decisions as a judge on the District Court for the District of Columbia, which helps paint a picture of the cases Judge Jackson decided, the people involved, and how her decisions fared on appeal. Some aggregate statistics and other information on Judge Jackson’s background…
What to Expect From Kavanaugh’s 1st Term
The tense waiting is now over as Justice Kavanaugh was confirmed to the Supreme Court on October 6th 2018. One of the big stories following Kavanaugh though is his low rate of public approval. This low rate of approval was apparent soon after Kavanaugh was nominated. Not only this, but as the figure below shows, Kavanaugh was…
Empirical SCOTUS 