This Supreme Court term, like the past several before it, has been slow out of the gates. It also marks another term with a new justice – this time Justice Kavanaugh. The justices often find consensus early on in a term and after a largescale change only later to define or redefine their jurisprudential boundaries….
Tag: Lee Epstein
The Big Business Court
The current Supreme Court is unabashedly friendly towards big business. How friendly? If the Court’s trajectory continues, perhaps as friendly as any Court dating back to the Lochner-era where laissez-faire policies exuded from the Court’s rulings. Prominent scholars, most notably Epstein, Landes, and Posner found empirical support for the proposition that the current Court is more pro-business…
Retirement Plan Blues
It is that time of year again. As we near the end of the Supreme Court term, we are experiencing another round of prognostications on whether Justice Kennedy will retire leaving another vacancy for the Trump Administration to fill (last year’s take on the possibility of Kennedy’s retirement can be found here). About this time of…
A Record Set by the OSG During the Obama Years
The Solicitor General’s Office (OSG) has a special relationship with the Supreme Court. In the role of adviser the Solicitor General is often referred to as the 10th Justice. The OSG enjoys much higher than average success in bringing cases to the Court and is even asked to give its opinions on whether the Court should…
Research Corner: 7/15/2016
Three new works on the study of judicial behavior: Alma Cohen, Alon Klement & Zvika Neeman, Judicial Decision Making: A Dynamic Reputation Approach, J. Legal Stud. (2015) Examines “how judicial elections affect the incentives and decisions of judges” Lee Epstein, Some Thoughts on the Study of Judicial Behavior, 57 Wm. & Mary L. Rev….
Will Ghosts of Past Decisions Come Back to Haunt This Term?
Do Supreme Court Justices abide by the Court’s past precedents in cases where such precedents are not overruled? Political Scientists have long debated this question with differing accounts based on ideological theory, strategic theory, and post-behavioralism. Without getting lost in the weeds of this debate this post takes a look at the Justices’ votes in…
empiricalscotus.com 