Breaking News

Term Tracker Tag

By on Jul 25, 2007 at 2:51 pm
We thought it would be useful to look back at the blog’s Petitions to Watch feature and corresponding "Conference Call" column for Legal Times. All of the petitions we featured – along with the several hundred cert. documents filed in many of the cases – can be found at this webpage. It was obviously a slow term. The Court granted only 56 cases in the 12 months between July of 2006 and June of 2007; according to statistics from the Harvard Law Review, that’s the lowest number of paid grants over any year in the Court’s modern history. For more on OT06’s record-low docket, see this post. While we don’t yet have an exact count of how many paid cases were considered over the past 12 months, it looks to be roughly 1600-1700 cases; that means that somewhere in the neighborhood of 3% of the paid cases the Court considered were granted. Tom flagged 47 of those, or about 84%, as potential grants. (Two didn’t make it onto the published lists as a result of logistical snafus.) Nineteen paid cases were CVSG’d in the same time span; we had 15 on the list, for 79%. An additional 14 pauper cases were granted this Term. While we don’t track those cases as part of our regular coverage – it’s logistically next-to-impossible given the volume – we did try to spotlight a number that looked like they were going to be seriously considered. Ultimately, we featured 223 petitions – about 13% of the paid cases. As noted, 47 were granted, for a grant rate of 21%, while another 15 (7%) were sent to the SG. 16 additional cases were held, GVR’d, settled, withdrawn, or not denied for any reason – another 7%. Finally, 143 of our 223 cases were eventually denied (64%).

By on Jun 5, 2007 at 12:25 pm
In our continuing quest to provide you with as much information about the Court as possible, we’ve added two new sections to our “StatPack” this week. In fact, as we keep adding features, the download is getting more difficult to navigate. Thus, you can download the full pack by clicking here, or you can download each section separately at the end of this post. The first new feature comes by reader suggestion: you’ll now find decisions this Term broken down by vote, so that you can see the number of 5-4 or unanimous cases at a glance (you can download just this section here). For next week’s StatPack, we’ll be making this feature even more comprehensive by adding this data from previous Terms for comparison’s sake. Second, we now have a new page featuring the tally for the Court’s workload this Term. As noted here, things may change subtly between now and the Summer Recess, but it’s expected that the Court will issue 66 merits decisions after argument this Term. The Court is also on pace for 70 total merits decisions when summary reversals are included (note that argued cases that were dismissed are not included in these totals). Both of those numbers are new modern lows for the Court, as 66 decisions after argument would be some 7% lower than last Term’s modern low of 71 cases. Such a drop has not been unexpected at all for Court-watchers, as the Court’s expanded workload in April did not entirely make up for its previously noted shortfall in cases argued during the December, February, and March sittings. Moreover, the slight dip continues the overall trend in the Court’s workload, as the Court has not decided more than 80 cases after argument since OT97, and has not decided more than 100 cases after argument since OT92 (for data going back to OT90, see this memo). Unless something remarkable happens in the next few weeks, however, the Court’s number of merits decisions after argument will dip below 70 for the first time in its modern history. The individual section downloads can be found after the jump.