Is there a formula to becoming a Supreme Court clerk? Perhaps a certain pedigree? How about a prior federal clerkship? The short answer to all three questions is yes. At very least, going to a certain school and working for a specific judge significantly enhance your chances. Much of the discussion surrounding Supreme Court clerkships has centered…
Tag: R
Redistricting Precedent in Light of Evenwel
The Supreme Court decided Evenwel v. Abbott this week – a case with vast implications for legislative districts. Some see the decision as snubbing Republicans by ruling that states and localities should use total rather than voting population to draw these districts. Other commentary views the ruling as sufficiently narrow to allow future litigation in the same…
Opinion Stats: Americold Realty Trust v. ConAgra Foods, Inc.
In this new series I look at Supreme Court opinions to provide a sense of the opinion’s writing quality and content. Although there is no consensus measure for writing quality, I have used StyleWriter 4 in past papers (e.g. Counting on Quality) and it does a good job of tailoring linguistic analyses to legal content…
Forecasting Votes in Hellerstedt
On March 2nd, the Court heard oral arguments in perhaps the most publicized case of the Term – Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt (No. 15-274). The case brings into question Texas’ new controversial law limiting who can perform abortions. Prior to oral arguments expectations were already high that the Justices would split along ideological lines…
The Breyer Court? (Network Analysis of the Justices Votes in OT 2014)
In political science ideal points are the most common measure describing judges’ votes. The goal of ideal points in the study of courts is locating the relative political ideology of a judge on a scale of liberal to conservative. Of course what it actually means to be a conservative or liberal judge is somewhat contested….
Mining the Majority Opinion in Lockhart
Yesterday’s opinions in Lockhart showcased some unusual themes for the Court. Between the majority and dissenting opinions the Justices referenced the Kansas City Royals and the movies Star Wars and Zoolander. Atypical to say the least. Here is take a deeper look at the language of Lockhart’s majority opinion using a few text mining and analysis…
empiricalscotus.com 