Federal Judiciary

Stat Pack available

By Akin Gump Supreme Court Practice Group

A preliminary Stat Pack analyzing the opinions for this Term through today is here.   The separate charts in it are:

• Decided Cases by Final Vote
• Opinion Authors by Sitting
• Frequency in the Majority
• Opinion Author v. Vote Split and Separate Opinion Authorship (with input from Kedar Bhatia at the Daily Writ)
• Justice Agreement (all cases, non-unanimous cases)
• Circuit Scorecard (circuits of origin, affirmation v. reversal rates)
• Grants by Conference

We will include more charts in the later editions of the Stat Pack to be released this Term.  For all of the blog’s statistic reports from OT95 onward, please see our archives on SCOTUSwiki here.

Yesterday the Court finished its oral argument schedule.  We expect orders and opinions on Mondays only from now through the end of May.  Beginning in June, we may begin to get opinions on additional days — likely Thursdays — each week.  From now on the Justices’ private conferences will be held on Thursdays.

Some key take-aways from the Stat Pack and the Term are below the jump.

• There are 42 decided merits cases and 2 dismissed cases (we exclude Briscoe v. Virginia, as not a merits case, and Citizens United, as OT08).  Of the 42, 33 are in argued cases, 2 are in cases decided before argument, and 9 are summary dispositions.
• Of the 42 decided cases, 22 are unanimous, while only 5 are 5-4 splits.  Of the 5-4 splits, the dissenting block in two of the five cases consisted of Justices Stevens, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor.  In two of three additional cases in which the Court split 5-3 with Justice Sotomayor taking no part, the dissenters were Justices Stevens, Ginsburg, and Breyer.
• Chief Justice Roberts has dissented only twice so far this Term, in South Carolina v. North Carolina and Wellons v. Hall (a “GVR”).  Justice Scalia has dissented once more, in Padilla v. Kentucky and two summary reversals, Wellons v. Hall and Presley v. Georgia.   By contrast, Justice Stevens has dissented nine times, Justice Breyer eight.
• Justice Sotomayor has taken no part in 4 decided cases, 2 of which were 5-3 split decisions (Hemi Group v. City of New York and Stolt-Nielson v. AnimalFeeds).  Justice Alito took no part in one, unanimously decided case.  Every other Justice has voted in all of the cases decided so far.
• There are 44 outstanding merits cases, which we listed earlier today.  Four are from the November Sitting (Schwab v. Reilly, Graham v. Florida, Sullivan v. Florida, and Bilski v. Kappos).  Justices Stevens, Kennedy, and Thomas have yet to author opinions for the Court from that sitting.  Four are from the December Sitting (Stop the Beach Renourishment v. Florida, Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, Black v. United States, and Weyhrauch v. United States).    The only Justices who have not yet authored opinions from that sitting are Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Scalia and Kennedy.
• Cases from the Ninth Circuit comprise 19% of the Court’s docket this Term.
• The Court has granted 17 cases for OT10, 7 of which originate in the Ninth Circuit.

Full post as published by SCOTUSBLOG on April 29, 2010 (boomark / email).