The End of the October 2005 Term
Following the Supreme Court is a lot like following professional sports. Summer is the off-season, the season kicks off on the first Monday in October, and the World Series is the string of cases handed down in the last week of the Term. When the season ends, you either celebrate the victories of your team or shrug and say, “well, there’s always next year.” You can’t buy hot dogs and beer during oral argument, but that’s just a quirky tradition and may change under the new Chief Justice.
Given the similarities, it’s only appropriate to note that Akin Gump summer associates have been busy assembling end-of-the-Term stats, posted over at the invaluable SCOTUSblog. No batting averages, home runs, or RBIs, but here is a memo on the basic stats, here is a chart of voting relationships and a chart of the cases by circuit, and here is another with basic stats in chart form. Very helpful, and very cool to have it so soon. Thanks to Jordan Hollender, Adam Tope, Jason Harrow, Cody Harris, and Rob Yablon for compiling these stats for the measly salary of $2,600 a week.
Continuing the baseball theme, let’s finish up the functional end of the Term with a song, to the tune of “Take Me Out to The Ball Game.”
Take me out to the Court,
Grant some petitions for certiorari
I don’t care if the opinions are scary!
Let me root, root, root for respondent,
If he doesn’t win activism’s to blame,
For it’s 3, 4, 5 votes to win at the Supreme Court game.
Of course, the commentary continues unabated during the off-season, and there are other sports like “Congress” and “Circuit Courts” to watch if you get really bored.
WordPress database error: [Incorrect key file for table 'wp_comments'; try to repair it]
SELECT * FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_post_ID = '316' AND comment_approved = '1' ORDER BY comment_date