On January 24, 2022 the United States Supreme Court granted cert in consolidated cases reviewing affirmative action programs at both Harvard and North Carolina Universities along with the Court’s precedent upholding affirmative action programs from the 2003 case Grutter v. Bollinger. By August of 2022, nearly 100 groups and individuals filed amicus briefs covering a…
Tag: Paul Collins
Will Kavanaugh’s Confirmation Hearings Provide Any Useful Information?
Supreme Court nominees’ confirmation hearings involve much dialogue between the nominees and senators. In two chaotic days of hearings for Judge Kavanaugh, we have seen a full spectrum of behavior from both sides of the aisle. Showboating aside, this is a genuinely important hearing for a crucial seat on the Court and hence emotions are running…
Professors as Amici
Amicus briefs filed before the Supreme Court are most commonly used as a tool for interest groups use to convey their positions (for a look at interest groups’ use of amicus briefs see this article by Professor Paul Collins). This is not the sole use of such briefs though. Non-party individuals and groups that have an…
Inferences From Amicus Briefs and How Justice Kennedy Continues to Rule Supreme
This post analyzes the amicus filings from this past Term in three ways. First it looks at counts of cert stage amicus filings and compares them to merits stage filings. This difference show whether the interest in a case prior to the Court granting cert paralleled the interest in the case’s outcome on the merits. …
Empirical SCOTUS 