The crazy kids over at SCOTUSwiki have compiled court data for the last 12 years here. After looking at a few of them, I was curious to see if the number of opinions authored by Justices would increase or decrease over time. I used the links of SCOTUSwiki up to 1995, but I had to [...]

I’ve updated the speaking statistics to reflect this month’s oral arguments. You can find a rough sketch of my methodology on speaking here and on laughter here. You can click on the images to see a larger version. You can find my data here (Numbers required.) Speaking (pdf): Laughter (pdf):

This is nothing new, groundbreaking, or particularly insightful but I was reading Hill v. Colorado (2000) for one of my Constitutional Law classes and I stumbled upon this line from the introduction to Justice Scalia’s dissent: None of these remarkable conclusions should come as a surprise. What is before us, after all, is a speech [...]

Hilary Clinton makes some remarks on the state of the Court and the person she would potentially select if given the opportunity. Well, her comments are hypocritical to say the least. She engages in judge-bashing even though she isn’t saying names but she ridicules others for doing it. She has some good ideas about overturning [...]

The Supreme Court today issued a temporary stay in the execution of Thomas D. Arthur (here). Not a lot of real analysis required in this case- the Court has been doing this since mid-October. Its getting old.

Oral Arguments took place this morning in Boumediene v. Bush and its sister case, Al-Odah v. US. Because of the heightened interest in the case, the Supreme Court opted to expedite the delivery of the audio recording and it was broadcast on C-Span by 11:50EST, less than an hour after the arguments concluded. The arguments [...]

The Supreme Court today ruled in Logan v. US and CSX Transportation v. State Board of Equalization. I’ve updated the Case Index to reflect the new decisions. Updates coming as soon as I get them. In Logan, the Court heard the case of a man who argued that retaining rights at all times is legally [...]

I’ve updated a lot of the information on the Term Case Index in preparation for today’s cases. I expect the Supreme Court to hand down 1-2 opinions on merit this morning but its hard to say which ones specifically. My guess: Gall for sure and maybe Kimbrough. Regardless, the opinions that we get today will [...]

I found a neat article over at the New York Times Archives entitled “Ideas % Trends; Scalia Speaks Up, Quite Clearly, At Bar Convention from 1987. According to the article, Justice Scalia was the most talkative person on the bench even in the late 80′s when he was a relative newcomer to the Court. The [...]