By the numbers: Update on OT11 and an updated Stat Pack (CORRECTED)

By Kedar Bhatia
on May 31, 2012 at 10:20 am

This is another post in an ongoing series analyzing statistical trends at the Court. For a more complete look at the statistics that we collect on the Court, you can find all of our up-to-date charts and graphs here.

Pace of Grants. The Court is well under its normal pace of grants for the current Term. There are currently 15 petitions granted for OT12, plus one case held over from OT11, Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co.. By the same point in past years, the Court had granted 28 cases (for OT08), 29 cases (for OT09), 24 cases (for OT10), and 19 cases (for OT11). As Tom has mentioned during recent live blogs, Court watchers expect the Justices to significantly increase their pace of grants as the Term wraps up over the next month.

Pace of Opinions. The Court’s pace of opinions has been far more rapid. The Court has decided 58 total merits cases, more than in any year during the Roberts Court except OT08, when it decided 59 cases by the same point, and OT09, when it equaled the current pace with 58 cases decided.

Justice Agreement. With nearly 60 merits opinions released, we can begin to see the traditional Justice agreement patterns. Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito share the highest rate of agreement on cases in full, in part, or in judgment only (96.5%), while the pairs of Justices Scalia and Thomas (94.8%) and Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Thomas (93.0%) follow closely. Justice Kennedy most frequently agrees with Chief Justice Roberts, 89.3% of the time. The Justices with the lowest agreement are Justices Scalia and Ginsburg (60.3%) and Justices Thomas and Ginsburg (60.3%).

Advocates. Elite members of the Supreme Court bar have had a good year. Paul Clement leads all advocates in private practice with nine appearances, including appearances in cases such as Perry v. Perez, Arizona v. United States, and three times during the Affordable Care Act cases. Carter Phillips had the second-highest tally with five arguments, matching his impressive tally from last year and leaving him tied with Clement for the greatest number of appearances over the past two Terms. Gregory Garre argued four times during OT11, Patricia Millett argued three times, and several lawyers argued twice. Below you can see a table of all advocates outside of the Solicitor General’s office who argued two or more times during the current Term.

 
Within the Office of the Solicitor General, Solicitor General Donald Verrilli leads the pack with nine arguments. Deputy Solicitors General Michael Dreeben and Edwin Kneedler argued four times each, Deputy Solicitor General Malcolm Stewart argued three times, and Principal Deputy Solicitor General Sri Srinivasan stepped up to the podium on three separate occasions as well. Several Assistants to the Solicitor General appeared three times: Curtis Gannon, Eric Miller, Nicole Saharsky, and Anthony Yang.

You can find a complete list of the advocates who argued two or more times during the Term, including advocates from the Office of the Solicitor General, on page 11 of our latest Stat Pack or here.

Stat Pack. We have once again expanded our Stat Pack and included several new charts. This edition reflects all opinions and orders released to date. You can find it here.

This edition features the following pages:

• Opinions by Sitting
• Circuit Scorecard
• Cases by Vote Split
• Opinions Authored
• Majority Opinion Authorship
• Frequency in the Majority
• Five-to-Four Majority Opinions
• Oral Arguments
• Advocates
• Justice Agreement
• Pace of Grants
• Pace of Opinions
• Voting Alignment

Corrected June 1 at 10:00am: There have been corrections to the following sections: Circuit Scorecard, Frequency in the Majority, and Voting Alignment. There was a typographical error on the Advocates page that has been fixed. The PDFs above have been updated to reflect these changes.

You can also find all of our regularly updated statistics by clicking on the “Statistics” button on the top bar or by clicking here.