Statistics

On this page, we keep ongoing statistics for the October 2018 term – dispositions by sitting, majority opinions authored by sitting, pace of grants, pace of decisions, the circuit scorecard and justice agreement. Our most recent complete Stat Pack, which includes these and other variables for the October 2017 term, can be found here (published June 29, 2018). Previous editions of the Stat Pack can be found at the Stat Pack archive. We regularly cross-post statistical analysis related to the court from Empirical SCOTUS.

Dispositions by sitting (major cases in red, decided cases shaded gray, reargued cases struck through)

October (9)	November (12)	December (10)	January (11)	February (8)	March (2)	Unscheduled (19)
Weyerhaeuser	Schein	Apple	Merck	Commerce	Rucho	Smith
Mt. Lemmon	Varela	Nieves	Obduskey	Return Mail	Benisek	Flowers
Gundy	Cougar Den	Nutraceutical	Herrera	Mission		Va. House
Madison	Garza	Murphy	Fourth	Gray		PDR Network
~~Knick~~	Gaos	Timbs	Hyatt	Manhattan		Cochise
New Prime	Jam	Dawson	Thacker	Haymond		Dutra Group
Stokeling	Sturgeon	Lorenzo	Rimini	Mont		Kisor
Stitt	Warren	Biestek	Home	Legion		Brunetti
Nielsen	Bucklew	Helsinn	Allina			Emulex
Devries	Loos	Gamble	Knick			Taggart
	Sudan		Tenn. Wine			Davis
	Culbertson					Quarles
						Rehaif
						Parker
						Kaestner Trust
						Food Marketing
						McDonough
						Fort Bend County
						Mitchell

Majority opinions authored by sitting


	Oct.	Nov.	Dec.	Jan.	Feb.	March	April	Total
Argued	10	12	10	11	0	0	0	43

Roberts	1							1
Thomas	1	1						2
Ginsburg	1							1
Breyer	1							1
Alito								0
Sotomayor								0
Kagan								0
Gorsuch	1							1
Kavanaugh		1						1
Per Cur.								0

Remaining	4	10	10	11	8	0	0	64
	Oct.	Nov.	Dec.	Jan.	Feb.	March	April	Total

Pace of grants

*Click the image to get a bigger look at the court’s current pace of grants

*The Minimum Distribution Pace presented in this chart reflects the number of petitions that must be granted to fill the court’s docket for oral argument while giving the litigants in each case a complete or near-complete briefing schedule. The pace also reflects the number of petitions raised at each conference and other factors affecting the certiorari process.

Pace of decisions

*Click the image to get a bigger look at the court’s current pace of decisions

Circuits

	Total	% Total	Aff’d	Rev	% Aff’d	% Rev’d
CA1	2	3%	1	0	100%	0%
CA2	4	5%
CA3	3	4%
CA4	4	5%
CA5	4	5%	0	2	0%	100%
CA6	7	9%	0	2	0%	100%
CA7	–	–
CA8	4	5%	0	1	0%	100%
CA9	14	19%	1	1	50%	50%
CA10	3	4%
CA11	7	9%	1	1	50%	50%
CADC	3	4%
CAFC	5	7%
CAAF	0	–
State	10	14%
Dist. Court	4	5%
Orig.	0	–	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Total	74	100%	3	7	30%	70%

Voting relationships – OT2017

	Justice Agreement in full, in part, or in judgment
	AMK	CT	RBG	SGB	SAA	SMS	EK	NMG
JGR	90%	79%	68%	70%	77%	66%	72%	83%
	AMK	83%	66%	66%	82%	65%	71%	86%
		CT	55%	55%	93%	51%	59%	81%
			RBG	89%	54%	96%	90%	58%
				SGB	54%	90%	93%	61%
					SAA	49%	57%	83%
						SMS	91%	55%
							EK	64%
								NMG

Featured Posts

Challengers urge justices to dismiss census case after district court ruling – Amy Howe

Reargument analysis: Justices seek a “middle position” in takings litigation case – Miriam Seifter

Argument analysis: Justices have strong views about removal of class actions – Ronald Mann
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This Week at the Court
The Supreme Court released additional orders from the January 11 conference on Monday; the justices called for the views of the U.S. solicitor general in CSX Transportation Inc. v. Alabama Department of Revenue, Alabama Department of Revenue v. CSX Transportation Inc. and Toshiba Corp. v. Automotive Industries Pension Trust Fund.
On Tuesday, the justices released their opinions in New Prime Inc. v. Oliveira and Stokeling v. United States.
On Monday, the justices heard oral argument in Thacker v. Tennessee Valley Authority and Rimini Street Inc. v. Oracle USA Inc.
On Tuesday, the justices heard oral argument in Home Depot U.S.A. Inc. v. Jackson and Azar v. Allina Health Services.
On Wednesday, the justices heard oral argument in Knick v. Township of Scott and Tennessee Wine & Spirits Retailers Association v. Blair.
On Friday, the justices meet for their January 18 conference; John Elwood's Relist Watch compiles the petitions relisted for this conference.
Recent Decisions
- New Prime Inc. v. Oliveira A court should determine whether the Federal Arbitration Act’s Section 1 exclusion for disputes involving the “contracts of employment” of certain transportation workers applies before ordering arbitration; here, truck driver Dominic Oliveira’s independent contractor operating agreement with New Prime Inc. falls within that exception.
- Stokeling v. United States The Armed Career Criminal Act’s elements clause encompasses a robbery offense that, like Florida’s law, requires the criminal to overcome the victim’s resistance.
- Culbertson v. Berryhill The Social Security Act’s fee cap of 25 percent of past-due benefits imposed on attorneys who successfully represent Title II benefit claimants in court proceedings applies only to fees for court representation and not to aggregate fees for both court and agency representation.
- Henry Schein Inc. v. Archer and White Sales Inc. The “wholly groundless” exception to the general rule that courts must enforce contracts that delegate threshold arbitrability questions to an arbitrator, not a court, is inconsistent with the Federal Arbitration Act and Supreme Court precedent.
- City of Escondido, California v. Emmons The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit failed to conduct the analysis required by Supreme Court precedents in determining whether two Escondido police officers were entitled to qualified immunity.
- Shoop v. Hill Because Danny Hill’s intellectual disability claim must be evaluated based solely on holdings of the Supreme Court that were clearly established at the time the state-court decisions were rendered, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit’s reliance on Moore v. Texas -- which was handed down much later -- was plainly improper.
see all this term’s cases »
Current Relists
- Altitude Express Inc. v. Zarda Whether the prohibition in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(a)(1), against employment discrimination “because of . . . sex” encompasses discrimination based on an individual’s sexual orientation.
- Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia Whether discrimination against an employee because of sexual orientation constitutes prohibited employment discrimination “because of . . . sex” within the meaning of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2.
- Box v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky Inc. (1) Whether a state may require health-care facilities to dispose of fetal remains in the same manner as other human remains, i.e., by burial or cremation; and (2) whether a state may prohibit abortions motivated solely by the race, sex or disability of the fetus and require abortion doctors to inform patients of the prohibition.
More Petitions »
Major Cases
- Lamone v. Benisek
  In case in which the plaintiffs allege that a Maryland congressional district was gerrymandered to retaliate against them for their political views: (1) whether the various legal claims articulated by the three-judge district court are unmanageable; (2) whether the three-judge district court erred when, in granting plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment, it resolved disputes of material fact as to multiple elements of plaintiffs’ claims, failed to view the evidence in the light most favorable to the non-moving party, and treated as “undisputed” evidence that is the subject of still-unresolved hearsay and other evidentiary objections; and (3) whether the three-judge district court abused its discretion in entering an injunction despite the plaintiffs’ years-long delay in seeking injunctive relief, rendering the remedy applicable to at most one election before the next decennial census necessitates another redistricting.
- Kisor v. Wilkie
  Whether the Supreme Court should overrule Auer v. Robbins and Bowles v. Seminole Rock & Sand Co., which direct courts to defer to an agency’s reasonable interpretation of its own ambiguous regulation.
- Department of Commerce v. U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York
  Whether, in an action seeking to set aside agency action under the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. § 701 et seq., a district court may order discovery outside the administrative record to probe the mental processes of the agency decisionmaker—including by compelling the testimony of high-ranking Executive Branch officials—when there is no evidence that the decisionmaker disbelieved the objective reasons in the administrative record, irreversibly prejudged the issue, or acted on a legally forbidden basis.
- Rucho v. Common Cause
  (1) Whether plaintiffs have standing to press their partisan gerrymandering claims; (2) whether plaintiffs’ partisan gerrymandering claims are justiciable; and (3) whether North Carolina’s 2016 congressional map is, in fact, an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander.
- The American Legion v. American Humanist Association
  (1) Whether a 93-year-old memorial to the fallen of World War I is unconstitutional merely because it is shaped like a cross; (2) whether the constitutionality of a passive display incorporating religious symbolism should be assessed under the tests articulated in Lemon v. Kurtzman, Van Orden v. Perry, Town of Greece v. Galloway or some other test; and (3) whether, if the test from Lemon v. Kurtzman applies, the expenditure of funds for the routine upkeep and maintenance of a cross-shaped war memorial, without more, amounts to an excessive entanglement with religion in violation of the First Amendment.
- Gamble v. United States
  Whether the Supreme Court should overrule the “separate sovereigns” exception to the double jeopardy clause.
see all this term’s cases »
Recent Special Features
Statistical Snapshot

Cases argued 43

Cases decided 9

Summary reversals 2

Merits cases granted to date 73

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Jan. 2019

Su	Mo	Tu	We	Th	Fr	Sa
		1 Holiday	2	3	4 Conference	5
6	7 Orders MERCK SHARP & DOHME CORP. V. ALBRECHT (17-290) OBDUSKEY V. MCCARTHY & HOLTHUS LLP (17-1307)	8 HERRERA V. WYOMING (17-532) FOURTH ESTATE PUBLIC BENEFIT CORP. V. WALL-STREET.COM, LLC (17-571) Opinions	9 FRANCHISE TAX BOARD OF CALIFORNIA V. HYATT (17-1299)	10	11 Conference	12
13	14 Orders THACKER V. TENNESSEE VALLEY AUTHORITY (17-1201) RIMINI STREET INC. V. ORACLE USA INC. (17-1625)	15 HOME DEPOT U.S.A. INC. V. JACKSON (17-1471) AZAR V. ALLINA HEALTH SERVICES (17-1484) Opinions	16 KNICK V. TOWNSHIP OF SCOTT, PENNSYLVANIA (17-647) TENNESSEE WINE AND SPIRITS RETAILERS ASSOCIATION V. BLAIR (18-96)	17	18 Conference	19
20	21 Holiday	22 Orders	23	24	25	26
27	28	29	30	31

Orders/Opinions
Arguments
Conferences

Events
Holidays
Multiple

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Justice Sotomayor at Harvard

On November 13, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit and Judge Susan Carney of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit presided over the final round of the 2018 Ames Moot Court Competition at Harvard Law School.

Peabody Award
Awarded the Peabody Award for excellence in electronic media.
Sigma Delta Chi
Awarded the Sigma Delta Chi deadline reporting award for online coverage of the Affordable Care Act decision.
National Press Club Award
Awarded the National Press Club's Breaking News Award for coverage of the Affordable Care Act decision.
Silver Gavel Award
Awarded the Silver Gavel Award by the American Bar Association for fostering the American public’s understanding of the law and the legal system.
American Gavel Award
Awarded the American Gavel Award for Distinguished Reporting About the Judiciary to recognize the highest standards of reporting about courts and the justice system.
Webby Award
Awarded the Webby Award for excellence on the internet.

	Justice Agreement in full, in part, or in judgment
	AMK	CT	RBG	SGB	SAA	SMS	EK	NMG
JGR	90%	79%	68%	70%	77%	66%	72%	83%
	AMK	83%	66%	66%	82%	65%	71%	86%
		CT	55%	55%	93%	51%	59%	81%
			RBG	89%	54%	96%	90%	58%
				SGB	54%	90%	93%	61%
					SAA	49%	57%	83%
						SMS	91%	55%
							EK	64%
								NMG

Cases argued	43
Cases decided	9
Summary reversals	2
Merits cases granted to date	73

	Justice Agreement in full, in part, or in judgment
	AMK	CT	RBG	SGB	SAA	SMS	EK	NMG
JGR	90%	79%	68%	70%	77%	66%	72%	83%
	AMK	83%	66%	66%	82%	65%	71%	86%
		CT	55%	55%	93%	51%	59%	81%
			RBG	89%	54%	96%	90%	58%
				SGB	54%	90%	93%	61%
					SAA	49%	57%	83%
						SMS	91%	55%
							EK	64%
								NMG

Statistics

Dispositions by sitting (major cases in red, decided cases shaded gray, reargued cases struck through)

Majority opinions authored by sitting

Pace of grants

Pace of decisions

Circuits

Voting relationships – OT2017

Featured Posts

Challengers urge justices to dismiss census case after district court ruling – Amy Howe

Reargument analysis: Justices seek a “middle position” in takings litigation case – Miriam Seifter

Argument analysis: Justices have strong views about removal of class actions – Ronald Mann

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Merits Case Pages and Archives

Recent Decisions

Current Relists

Conference of January 18, 2019

Major Cases

Recent Special Features

Live Blog Archives

Jan. 2019

Download our App in the Apple Store

First Mondays see all

Videos see all

Peabody Award

Sigma Delta Chi

National Press Club Award

Silver Gavel Award

American Gavel Award

Webby Award

	Justice Agreement in full, in part, or in judgment
	AMK	CT	RBG	SGB	SAA	SMS	EK	NMG
JGR	90%	79%	68%	70%	77%	66%	72%	83%
	AMK	83%	66%	66%	82%	65%	71%	86%
		CT	55%	55%	93%	51%	59%	81%
			RBG	89%	54%	96%	90%	58%
				SGB	54%	90%	93%	61%
					SAA	49%	57%	83%
						SMS	91%	55%
							EK	64%
								NMG