Adam Feldman analyzes SCOTUS statistics on Empirical SCOTUS, and notes a slow-down:
The Supreme Court tackles fewer cases by the year. SCOTUSBlog’s statistics as reported by First Mondays Podcast show that the Court has also been slower in writing signed opinions this term than in recent terms. What is leading to these changes? One clear anomaly from the Court’s norm is the length of time the Court has been without a ninth Justice. While this vacancy is the longest in recent memory it is not the longest historically. Still the Court’s workload seems to be declining over time and without other clear rationale aside from the Court’s composition to explain the downward trend.
Source: Empirical SCOTUS
The Federal Judiciary Center provides statistics on the number of cert petitions and cert grants every term. As the following figure shows petitions to Court have risen over time but recently declined a bit from their height in 2006.
Source: Empirical SCOTUS
At the same time the number of granted petitions has dropped from 159 in 1981 to as few as 63 in 2011.
Adam proposes no particular reason, and in truth it’s hard to do so. We could speculate that there are fewer cases worth taking a look at; a related view would be to suggest that the Roberts court (which he joined and began leading in 2005) wishes to examine only cases with true national significance. The graph doesn’t necessarily support or falsify such a proposition.
But I suppose only the Justices really know.
