Concurrences have played an increasingly important role in Supreme Court decision-making over time. They are nothing new though. Looking as far back as 1971’s landmark decision in New York Times v. United States, examining prior restraints on the press, we can see that along with the per curiam opinion, the justices authored six separate concurrences…
Tag: Sackett v. EPA
Charting the Justices Decisions Cutting Across Ideological Lines
Supreme Court decisions come down to coalitions and are often predicated on the question of whether a justice can garner at least four additional other votes to support their position in a case. Sometimes these coalitions are easy to come by. The Court decides somewhere around 33% or more of its cases on average per…
Term Update: We Haven’t Seen This in Over 25 Years
So far this term the liberal justices on the Supreme Court only have a combined four dissents through 26 argued and signed decisions. That is about a 5% dissent rate. For some perspective, the Court released 26 signed decisions in argued cases through May of last term. By that point the liberal justices accumulated 26…
A Definitive Look at the New OAs Led by KBJ
Something is clearly different this Supreme Court term after only two weeks of oral arguments. There is a chippiness in the air that wasn’t overtly present before. The distinction between the left and the right of the Court is still in play, but newly appointed Justice Jackson has had control of the proceedings far more…
Female Justices Take the Reins to Start Off SCOTUS’ 2022 Oral Arguments
The first argument of 2022 in Sackett v. EPA also marked Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s first argument as a newly appointed justice. After several of her peers on the Court completed introductory questions, Justice Jackson chimed in by piggybacking on top of the previous question asked by Justice Kagan. Justice Jackson began by asking about…
Empirical SCOTUS 