achelousb01: The Supreme Court term in review

Saturday, 2 July 2011

The Supreme Court term in review

Via SCOTUSblog, a few statistics from the Supreme Court term which just ended, Justice Kagan's first on the Court:

Just 18% of the Court's docket was decided on a 5-4 basis, a relatively low figure. Of those decisions, 88% featured Justice Kennedy siding with the four liberals or four other conservatives on the Court, the highest that number has been in recent years, including the highest of Conservative Four + Kennedy.
Forty-eight percent of the decisions this term were unanimous, a relatively high mark.
Overall, in cases in which the Court was divided Justice Kennedy voted in the majority 88% of the time, the highest such figure on the Court, followed by the Chief Justice at 83%. Justice Ginsburg was the most frequent dissenter in such cases, appearing in the majority only 50% of the time.
Justices Scalia, Breyer, and Sotomayor asked the most questions at oral argument; you know who asked the fewest (zero again).
The Justices who agreed the most on the Court this term were the Chief Justice and Justice Alito, 96.2% of the time, followed by the pairings of Sotomayor-Kagan, Ginsburg-Kagan, Roberts-Scalia and Roberts-Kennedy. Ginsburg-Alito agreed the least frequently, and Scalia-Thomas fell just outside the top ten. That full grid is here.

SCOTUSblog has summarized all the Court's holdings this term in this comprehensive chart.

Compared to recent years this was not the most exciting term for Court watchers--no abortion, gay rights, or major war on terror cases, nothing as explosive as Citizens United.

What we've seen, instead, is the continuation of a years-long effort under the Roberts Court to deny injured people the effective ability to present their cases before a jury of their peers, as the Court has whittled down the ability to seek class action relief by forcing consumers into individual arbitration and denying the weight of statistical evidence documenting a massive employer's discriminatory practices. [Seriously, watch the Netroots Nation panel on this topic with Nan Aron (Alliance for Justice), Dahlia Lithwick (Slate), Eva Paterson (Equal Justice Society), Carl Pope (Sierra Club), and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI).]

Next term, such weighty matters as the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, marriage equality, and state efforts on immigration may make their way to the Court ... just in time for a presidential election.