The amicus machine has arrived. Ninety-eight percent of US Su-preme Court cases now
have amicus curiae (" friend of the court") filings; 800 briefs are filed each term with the …

Back in the 1940s the political scientist C. Herman Pritchett began tallying the votes and
opinions of Supreme Court Justices. His goal was to use data to test the hypothesis that the …

The policing of Black people 1 is a frequent conversation topic both in and outside the ivory
tower. It is easy to tick off the facts. Police stop Black drivers and pedestrians at higher rates …

The Supreme Court maintains self-regulatory rules that have fluctuated over time, and each
change affects the nature of the Court itself. Many of these rules are well-known: the rule of …

In an important new Article, The Incompatibility of Substantive Canons and Textualism,
Professors Benjamin Eidelson and Matthew Stephenson argue that substantive canons …

Court announces its most anticipated decisions. 1 These decisions deal with controversial
topics ranging from abortion and contraception to universal healthcare and marriage …

Justices use information from attorneys, amici, and the solicitor general to learn about cases.
One source that has gone with little empirical scrutiny is their law clerks. I validate a measure …

Abstract The Supreme Court enjoys nearly complete discretion when it makes its initial
agenda-setting decisions. In 1988, Greg Caldeira and John Wright published an important …

Following a talk by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia at American University
Washington College of Law in 2009, a student in the audience asked what she had to do to …

Law clerks have been part of the American judicial system since 1882, when Supreme Court
Justice Horace Gray hired a young Harvard Law School graduate named Thomas Russell to …