This is a historic year for the Supreme Court. After a second term with a conservative supermajority, the Court is once again positioned to make key decisions along ideological lines. While the Roberts Court will be remembered for its ideological splits and key decisions in the areas of individual rights and liberties, it will also…
Tag: Justice Sotomayor
Opinions Say What?
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…
April 8 Week in Review
This week started out with a new post on the schools and lower court clerkships that will most likely land a former law student a Supreme Court clerkship. The post can be found here. Next up was a look at the cases decided so far this term and the justices who authored each opinion. Justices…
Is Oral Argument Talking Time All It’s Cut Out to Be?
Supreme Court oral arguments are not all what they seem. While at first blush they may appear to be an opportunity for attorneys to make their arguments before the judges, they often become instances for the justices to test out their theories of a given case and to gauge other justices’ positions on given topics….
Competition to Speak During 2018 Supreme Court Oral Arguments
Oral arguments for the 2018 term are now complete. In a term where we have the potential to see heightened polarization on the Court like never before, oral arguments are impacted as well. One indicator of this harkens back to the previous term where all 5-4 decisions made across ideological lines ended in conservative victories. So…
Interruptions and References
Supreme Court oral arguments are traditionally thought of as a time for the Justices to interact with and ask question of attorneys in a case. One of the lesser thought of aspects of oral arguments has to do with the interaction among the Justices. Over the years several studies and articles have looked at this…
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…
Justice Sotomayor Shaking Up Post-Scalia Oral Arguments
f (image via Los Angeles Times) It has been over a month since Justice Scalia, one of the most engaged Justices in oral arguments since he was confirmed to the Court in 1986, passed away on February 13, 2016. For all of the commentary surrounding his passing and on the questions surrounding the process of…
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