Justices Breyer and Scalia went at it today during oral arguments in Horne v. Flores. Scene: Justice Breyer brings up a set of statistics from the record. JUSTICE SCALIA: Excuse me. I am not following this exchange because I don’t understand whether the — the statewide percentage is the statewide percentage of English learners or [...]

The Supreme Court today issued opinions today in Chambers v. US (here) and Jimenez v. Quarterman (here.) Chambers centers around whether or not refusing to report to prison constitutes a ‘violent felony,’ triggering longer sentencing guidelines. Justice Breyer wrote the unanimous opinion that was joined by the Chief Justice and Justices Stevens, Scalia, Kennedy, Souter, [...]

(Nearly) every majority opinion features a short introduction before it jumps into the standard I, II, III, IV, etc structure. Some Justices simply introduce the facts very briefly (Scalia), while others discuss the procedural history (Thomas), and others discuss the underlying issue in the case (Souter.) I took a look at all of the cases [...]

The use footnotes has been a topic of quiet conversation around the judiciary for some time now. One group of Judges and practitioners (and an even larger percentage of students) find them to be burdensome and often unnecessary. Others think they serve as useful guides and make opinions more readable. Footnotes largely come in two [...]

Once again, I’ve conjured up some charts marking how often each Justice spoke during oral arguments in the first half of the term. You can find a detailed look into my methodology here but to summarize, these numbers represent the number of times ‘JUSTICE ______’ is mentioned in the oral argument transcripts posted on the [...]

The future is bleak for democrats and judicial liberals. The average age of the four conservatives is 60.75 years (Roberts(53), Scalia (72), Thomas(60), Alito(58)). The average age of the four liberals, however, is 75.7 years (Stevens(88), Souter(69), Ginsburg(75), Breyer(70)). Justice Stevens, an active octogenarian and avid tennis player who frequently reads briefs on the beach [...]

Earlier tonight, Senators John McCain and Barack Obama joined Pastor Rick Warren at his California megachurch for an event pegged as “The Saddleback Civil Forum on the Presidency.” The interviews, each an hour in length, were separated by thirty-six tense seconds in which the presumptive nominees shared the stage (and an awkward hug [video here!]). [...]

Justice Stephen Breyer has taken part in a groundbreaking new online forum that was launched today, BigThink.com. The site finds ‘experts’ in various fields and invites them to give candid interviews on a variety of topics. For a more indepth look, check out an article from the New York Times here. Justice Breyer has always [...]

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 [...]

After finding the most talkative Justice, I was interested in finding the funniest Justice. According to my calculations, there were 51 total references to (Laughter.) in the court’s first two months of arguements. Here is the breakdown: Case JR JPS AS AK DS CT RBG SB SA COUNSEL TOTAL Washington 1 2 3 Tom F. [...]