One trope that was often repeated this past Supreme Court term was that the Court did not take on a particularly exciting caseload. Evidence for this comes in the form of the unprecedented level of agreement among the justices compounded by the eight justice composition for most of the term that wished to avoid 4-4…
Tag: Manuel v. City of Joliet
The Most Important Cases Already Argued This Term in SCOTUS
Over the last few years the Supreme Court has heard multiple landmark cases. The issues in these cases ranged from abortion to marriage equality and from affirmative action in schools to national healthcare. So far this Term the Court has not heard cases of the same magnitude. While cases like Beckles v. United States may…
SCOTUS’ Slight Push Back at the End of 2016
Context By many metrics, and even by the Court’s standards, the Supreme Court has been quiet so far during the 2016 Term. While the Court has naturally taken fewer cases over recent years (exponentially fewer if we look back over the preceding decades), there is context for the most current muted effort. Much of the…
New Court Dynamics With A New Term of Oral Arguments
After the first week of oral arguments for the 2016 Supreme Court Term, two of the main stories from the Court deal with Justice Breyer’s hypothetical question involving the robbery of Kim Kardashian, and the slight upturn in the number of female attorneys participating in oral arguments at the beginning of this Term as compared to years…
The OSG and More Potential Cases for 2016
With the Supreme Court’s 2016 Term around the corner, there is nowhere near a full slate of cases for the Justices to hear. While the October and November hearing schedules were released and there are a handful of other granted cases without oral argument dates on the calendar, there are currently only approximately 29 cases (see SCOTUSBlog’s list…
Bringing in the Big Guns
In a cautious and almost trepidatious manner the Supreme Court has slowly filled in part of its docket for the 2016 Term. The correlation between this slow-moving approach to cert and the empty seat on the Court is unmistakable. There are currently eight cases scheduled for argument in October. The Court already granted cert in…
The Lucky Ones: Cert Grants 2016
Sixteen. That is the number of cases that the Supreme Court is currently slated to hear in the 2016 Term. This number in itself is exceptionally low for this time of year, although in terms of absolute case grants it is not exponentially far behind years past (see below). For those who follow the Supreme…