The Denver University Law Review has just published a new sentencing survey on the Supreme Court’s decision last Term in Rita v. United States, see here. With the Court’s continued interest in sentencing matters, as evidenced by the Court’s consideration of Kimbrough and Gall next week, the articles in this issue are quite timely. Contributors include, among others, Judge Jeffrey Sutton (6th Circuit), Judge Nancy Gertner (D. Mass.), Judge Lynn Adelman (D. Wisc.), and Douglas Berman (Moritz College of Law-Ohio State University). The issue includes a top-notch group of contributors and I recommend taking a look at it if you are interested in the upcoming sentencing cases.

Arthur Hellman (University of Pittsburgh School of Law) has posted on SSRN a new article entitled “The Regulation of Judicial Ethics in the Federal System: A Peek Behind Closed Doors,” see here. Although the article talks more generally about ethics for federal judges, there are two components of it that have a substantial Supreme Court focus. First, the article discusses the recent controversies over the decisions of Justices Scalia (in the Cheney case) and Breyer (Booker and Fanfan) not to recuse themselves. Second, the article includes a lengthy discussion of a committee chaired by Justice Breyer that considered the operation of a 1980 Act setting forth the procedures for handling complaints against federal judges and taking action in cases involving judicial misconduct. Hellman always does great work.

Chris Bonneau (University of Pittsburgh), Thomas Hammond (Michigan State), Forrest Maltzman (George Washington University), and Paul Wahlbeck (George Washington University) have just posted on SSRN a new article entitled “Agenda Control, the Median Justice, and the Majority Opinion on the U.S. Supreme Court,” see here. Although this paper relies on data from the Burger Court (which is slightly less interesting and germane than Rehnquist Court data), the authors challenge the hypothesis that the median justice alone controls the content of majority opinions. Although it may seem intuitive, the paper concludes empirically that the writer of the majority opinion in fact exercises more influence than the median Justice in determining the content of majority opinions. I really like this paper because it is short, accessible for non-quantitative folks, and has quite a bit of interesting new information. The final paragraph in the paper about the impact of judicial appointments is especially thought-provoking.