Nine Justices, Ten Years: A Statistical Retrospective

The 2003 Term marked an unprecedented milestone for the Supreme Court: for the first time in history, nine Justices celebrated a full decade presiding together over the nation\u27s highest court.\u27 The continuity of the current Court is especially striking given that, on average, one new Justice has been appointed approximately every two years since the Court\u27s expansion to nine members in 1837.2 Although the Harvard Law Review has prepared statistical retrospectives in the past,3 the last decade presents a rare opportunity to study the Court free from the disruptions of intervening appointments. Presented here is a review of the 823 cases decided by the Court over the past decade. Of course, bare statistics cannot capture the nuanced interactions among the Justices nor substantiate any particular theory about the complex dynamics of the Court. Rather, this statistical compilation and the preliminary observations articulated here are intended only as a starting point- a modest effort to showcase trends that deserve closer attention and to jumpstart more robust analyses of how the Court, despite its apparent stability, has evolved over the past decade

Nine Justices, Ten Years: A Statistical Retrospective

The 2003 Term marked an unprecedented milestone for the Supreme Court: for the first time in history, nine Justices celebrated a full decade presiding together over the nation\u27s highest court.\u27 The continuity of the current Court is especially striking given that, on average, one new Justice has been appointed approximately every two years since the Court\u27s expansion to nine members in 1837.2 Although the Harvard Law Review has prepared statistical retrospectives in the past,3 the last decade presents a rare opportunity to study the Court free from the disruptions of intervening appointments. Presented here is a review of the 823 cases decided by the Court over the past decade. Of course, bare statistics cannot capture the nuanced interactions among the Justices nor substantiate any particular theory about the complex dynamics of the Court. Rather, this statistical compilation and the preliminary observations articulated here are intended only as a starting point- a modest effort to showcase trends that deserve closer attention and to jumpstart more robust analyses of how the Court, despite its apparent stability, has evolved over the past decade

Collateral Consequences: Plea Bargaining, Post-Conviction, and the Right to Effective Assistance of Counsel

The panel examines how the right to counsel applies in the context of plea bargaining, and how and how ineffective assistance of counsel at early stages of a criminal proceedings may affect later states such as post-conviction

Unequal Opportunities: Education and Other Rights of Incarcerated Juveniles

The panel analyzes incarcerated juveniles\u27 access to education and examines why it is essential that juveniles have access to lawyers while they are incarcerated