Ever since Harper’s Weekly started charging for access to their monthly index, I’ve been deprived of news by numbers. Now that I’ve finished my index(!), I think its as good a time as any to do some analysis. Try to follow along:

Number of Opinions handed down by this point last year: 52
Number of Opinions handed down in this term thus far: 40
Number of Per Curiam Decisions: 4
Number of Recinded Writs of Certiorari: 1

Number of 5-4 decisions: 11
Current likelihood that a case will have a 5-4 decision: 27.5%
Percentage of 5-4 decisions in which Justice Kennedy has been in the Majority: 100
Number of 5-4 decisions in which the Chief Justice and Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito have voted together: 9
Number of times that the same voting bloc has been in the majority: 3
Percentage chance that Justice Ginsburg will pen a dissent if she is not in the majority of a 5-4 decision: 60

Number of cases in which Justice Thomas has been the sole dissenting vote: 2
Number of cases in which Justice Stevens has been the sole dissenting vote: 2
Total number of cases in which another justice has been the sole dissenting vote: 1 (Scalia)

Number of Patent cases taken since 1982: 16
Number of those cases taken this term: 3
Number of those cases in which the SCOTUS overruled the federal circuit court: 3
Number of those cases in which the majority was at least 7: 3

Related posts

• Which Justice Will Author The Medellin Opinion? (March 19, 2008)
• Updated Humor Statistics (March 7, 2008)
• Unity Defined (June 11, 2007)