All Article III federal judgeships start at the same place — with a presidential nomination. This procedure played a large role in the first several decades of statistical studies of judicial behavior, where researchers found that the party of appointing president was a strong predictor of judicial votes. While not looked at as frequently anymore,…
Tag: justices
The Circuit Barrage: The Justices’ Divergent Votes Based on Lower Courts
Introduction While few people would argue against the proposition that the Supreme Court Justices are some of the most intelligent legal luminaries in the United States, these luminaries often rule in opposing directions. The number of the Court’s split decisions often outnumber the number of unanimous decisions. During the 2021 Term, the number of 6-3…
Supreme Court Justice Power Index at the End of the 2022 Term
Who is the powerful Supreme Court Justice on the current Court? This question, while interesting to think about, leads to several subsequent questions, primarily to do with what is meant by “powerful.” The vagueness with which we define power leads to a near impossibility in coming up with a legitimate and valid answer. Other studies…
Supreme Court End of Term Cheat Sheet
As the Supreme Court completes the final leg of the 2022 Term here is what we know and what we can expect as the justices grapple with cases surrounding several topics important to many Americans. This morning CNN released an article delving into these topics. (1) Here are the decisions released so far this month…
The Court’s Decision Making Through January 2021
The addition of three justices in four years under President Donald Trump along with a year of Covid-19 has slowed the Supreme Court’s business. So far this term, we can note that the Court is in the midst of a downturn in terms of the number of opinions it decides by the end of January…
Empirical SCOTUS 