The odds are stacked against attorneys seeking to have their cases heard by the Supreme Court. While attorneys working on cases accepted for review have a 50/50 chance of success on the merits, the average likelihood of a cert grant is around 1%. Certain attorneys though have a much higher success rate (also documented in…
Tag: Seth Waxman
What the Justices Cited in OT 2018
During the 2018 term, the Supreme Court heard 67 oral arguments leading to decisions. The justices’ opinions cited briefs filed in these cases and law articles approximately 601 times. These citations were from a total of approximately 330 briefs and articles. The citations were primarily clustered in certain cases. For instance, 30 cases or about…
Advocates that Drive the Justices’ Votes
Supreme Court scholars often debate the role of lawyers in Supreme Court decision making. For an attitudinalist, the justices’ preferences make all (or at least most of) the difference. According to this theory justices will often vote based on their preferred policy direction, which minimizes the role of advocacy. More recent studies show that such…
The Heightened Importance of the Federal Circuit
This term the Supreme Court will hear arguments in its 100th case decided below by the Federal Circuit. The Court’s recent grant of the case Kisor v. Wilkie for argument also marks the fourth case granted from the Federal Circuit this term. This is by no means a small fraction of the Court’s total caseload….
Supreme Court All-Stars 2013-2017
Success in the Supreme Court is hard to define because it can be viewed in a variety of ways. Few attorneys have the opportunity to try cases there and even fewer argue multiple cases. Part of success therefore is simply getting a case or cases to the Court. Once the Court agrees to hear a…
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…
Supreme Court Movers and Shakers (Attorneys and Justices)
The consequences of certain decisions have repercussions far beyond those that affect the immediate cases. While this is an indisputable aspect of decisions from courts of last resort, prognosticating the potential consequences of decisions is an art fraught with questionable inferences. In a series of decisions the Supreme Court has a substantial policy impact. These…
Attorneys in the Clutch
Earlier this year I ran a blog post on the most powerful justices across time, which focused on their decisions in cases with single vote margin majorities. That post accounted for the decision makers, but it did not consider the attorneys whose arguments factor into the justices’ decision calculi. This post takes a look at…
Fast Out of the Gates (SCOTUS’ October 2017 Oral Arguments)
On October 2nd, the Supreme Court will be back in session with the first oral arguments of 2017. Since Justice Scalia passed away in February 2016 the justices have taken a light caseload and generally have not heard cases that would lead to great rifts among themselves. This non-divisive set of cases during the 2016…
Highly Citable
Attorneys before the Supreme Court have multiple goals. Whether the ultimate goal is winning a case, affecting public policy, or testing the constitutionality of a piece of legislation, good counsel get the justices’ attention. How they get the justices’ attention varies. Some engender attention through their regular experience before the Court while others through the…
The Year of the Patent
Possibly due to its eight Justice configuration, the Supreme Court heard a unique slate of cases this term with no noted landmark cases or decisions. Then again perhaps landmark is in the eye of the beholder. This term the Supreme Court heard six patent cases which conceivably is the most such cases the Supreme Court has heard…
Attorneys and Firms in the Supreme Court 2016
The Supreme Court wrapped up oral arguments for the 2016 term on April 26, 2017 with arguments in Sandoz Inc. v. Amgen and Maslenjak v. United States. These marked the 63rd and 64th arguments the Justices heard this term – down five from the 69 arguments the Justices heard a year prior. While the Court…
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