The Supreme Court heard oral argument on Tuesday in Hunter v. United States about what exceptions exist to federal defendants’ waivers of their right to appeal. The justices seemed poised to endorse more exceptions than just the two the government endorsed – ones for ineffective assistance of counsel in entering into a plea agreement and for sentences above the statutory maximum. A number of justices also expressed misgivings about relying on contract law to define exceptions to appellate waivers, the framework that both Hunter and the government principally invoked, and a majority seemed likely to hold, at a minimum, that a defendant could escape from an appellate waiver when enforcing it would result in a “miscarriage of justice,” a standard that a number of federal courts of appeals have applied.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled in Galette v. New Jersey Transit Corporation that two men who were seriously injured in New York and Pennsylvania by buses operated by New Jersey Transit can sue the transit agency in those states. In a unanimous opinion by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the justices held that New Jersey Transit is not an extension of the state of New Jersey and therefore does not share the state’s immunity from lawsuits.

The Supreme Court unanimously sided with the federal government on Wednesday in Urias-Orellana v. Bondi, holding in an opinion by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson that federal courts of appeals must use a relatively deferential standard of review when assessing the Board of Immigration Appeals’ determination that asylum seekers did not experience the level of persecution necessary to qualify for asylum protections.

We were live as the court released its opinions in Urias-Orellana v. Bondi and Galette v. New Jersey Transit Corp..

Empirical SCOTUS is a recurring series by Adam Feldman that looks at Supreme Court data, primarily in the form of opinions and oral arguments, to provide insights into the justices’ decision making and what we can expect from the court in the future.

Perhaps one of the most widespread practices that goes (relatively) unnoticed beyond Supreme Court aficionados and obsessives is what I call the “SCOTUS attorney switcheroo.” This is the change in counsel as a case travels from the lower courts to the Supreme Court. Although this may not – on the surface – seem like a very big deal, it has implications not only on the nature of what the court hears but what actually gets decided by the justices.