#gregory garre

A seemingly innocuous Supreme Court case in 2017 looking at the narrow issue of time bars in class action lawsuits saw two giants of Supreme Court advocacy duke it out before the nine justices. California Public Employees’ Retirement System v. ANZ Securities pit Tom Goldstein of then-named Goldstein and Russell for the Petitioner CALPERS against Paul Clement, then of Kirkland & Ellis, who argued…

New #EmpiricalSCOTUS post looking at time extension requests for cert petitions. With a hearty shout out to @johnpelwood

Occasionally someone will posit a question about Supreme Court practice to me dealing with an issue I haven’t examined. Recently, I had one such interaction with John Elwoodof Vinson & Elkins.  John asked if I had looked at applications for extensions of time to file petitions for writs of certiorari. As I hadn’t looked at this issue in any detail before, I decided to bring a quantitative…

When Opposites Attract Ideology Falls to the Wayside

Lots of noise is made about partisan and ideological divides on the Supreme Court.  There tends to be less hubbub surrounding instances when justices that traditionally divide ideologically, vote together. Such surprising coalitions formed in the majority and dissent for the Court’s decision in last week’s Patchak v. Zinke ruling.  Although this decision was met with only limited fanfare…

Attorneys in the Clutch

Earlier this year I ran a blog post on the most powerful justices across time, which focused on their decisions in cases with single vote margin majorities.  That post accounted for the decision makers, but it did not consider the attorneys whose arguments factor into the justices’ decision calculi.  This post takes a look at those attorneys by focusing on all single vote margin decisions during…