8 Takeaways From The Latest SCOTUS Term

Readers, what are your thoughts on the Supreme Court Term just ended?

The Supreme Court of the United States (photo by David Lat).

And that’s a wrap: on Friday, June 27, October Term 2024 of the Supreme Court of the United States came to an end. The Court will stand in recess until the first Monday in October, which this year falls on Monday, October 6, 2025.

With OT 2024 still fresh in our minds, let’s take a moment to discuss. This is a Notice and Comment (N&C) post, so all readers can post in the comments—not just paid subscribers.

I’ll kick things off with a few observations of my own. Many of them I owe to SCOTUSblog’s excellent Stat Pack, prepared by Jake Truscott and Adam Feldman, which you should download and check out if you haven’t already.

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Here are eight thoughts about OT 2024 at SCOTUS:

1. There was a normal level of unanimity. In defending the Court against charges that it’s overly political, the Justices often tout the fact that a sizable chunk of their cases are decided unanimously. This Term, 42 percent of cases were decided unanimously, which is pretty consistent with the average of 45 percent over the past ten Terms. (To the extent that this Term “felt” more unanimous to me, my perception might have been skewed by that trio of unanimous decisions on June 5, in cases touching on the culture-war issues of “God, guns, and gays”).

2. Not all 6-3 splits were conservatives vs. liberals. Ten decisions, amounting to 15 percent of decided cases, were resolved by 6-3 votes—but these weren’t all conservative/liberal splits, with Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson in dissent. Instead, 9 percent of the total cases involved that classic conservative/liberal divide, and 6 percent featured the three most conservative justices—Justices Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch—in dissent. So it’s an oversimplification to say the Court is a purely political institution in which the six Republican appointees always triumph. (But yes, it’s true that many of the most controversial and high-profile cases get decided by 6-3, ideological splits.)

3. This is the Roberts/Kavanaugh/Barrett Court. As I mentioned in the latest edition of Judicial Notice, Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Kavanaugh and Barrett firmly control the outcomes in divided cases. The Chief was in the majority 95 percent of the time (and didn’t write a single separate opinion this Term), Justice Kavanaugh was in the majority 92 percent of the time, and Justice Barrett clocked in at 89 percent. In fourth place was Justice Kagan, in the majority 83 percent of the time—beating out Justices Thomas, Gorsuch, Alito, and Sotomayor, who were all in the majority 78 percent of the time. Bringing up the rear was Justice Jackson, at 72 percent.

4. The strongest alignments were at the ideological poles of the Court. As noted by Stat Pack authors Jake Truscott and Adam Feldman, Justices Alito and Thomas agreed 97 percent of the time, and Justices Jackson and Sotomayor agreed 94 percent of the time.

5. Some circuits got reversed a lot. Subjectively and anecdotally, it felt to me that the Fifth Circuit took it on the chin this Term in terms of reversals. But if you look at reversals in percentage terms, the First, Fourth, Ninth, and Tenth Circuits were the most reversed, all with a 100 percent reversal rate—based on two, eight, four, and five cases decided by SCOTUS, respectively. So with a 0-8 record before the justices, the Fourth Circuit was the “biggest loser,” in terms of the court with the highest reversal rate and the highest total number of cases. (The Ninth Circuit had three cases that were dismissed as improvidently granted.)

6. The Fifth Circuit didn’t do that badly. The Fifth Circuit had the most total cases reversed (10), and some were high-profile—such as Bondi v. VanDerStock (a statutory-interpretation case about “ghost guns”), Kennedy v. Braidwood Management (an Appointments Clause challenge to an Affordable Care Act-created task force), and FCC v. Consumers Research (a nondelegation challenge to the FCC’s “universal service” scheme). But the Fifth Circuit wound up with a 77 percent overall reversal rate, since it was also affirmed in three appeals—including the closely followed Free Speech Coalition, Inc. v. Paxton (a First Amendment challenge to an age restriction for pornography websites).

7. Some circuits did (relatively) well. In terms of the most-affirmed circuits, there was a five-way tie between the Third, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, and Eleventh Circuits, which got reversed in 50 percent of their cases that went to One First Street this Term. The circuits in between 50 and 100 percent, besides the Fifth, were the Second and D.C. Circuits, with a 60 percent reversal rate, and the Federal Circuit, with a 67 percent reversal rate. In case you’re looking for a benchmark, the Supreme Court reverses around 60 percent of the time—so a court that got reversed only half of the time can be seen as above average.

8. Overall, this Term felt more “chill.” This last point is more subjective—and my husband Zach, now working at SCOTUSblog, disagrees with it—but this Term felt less “heated” and less “big” than recent Terms. By that I mean it felt less polarized and political, less consequential and controversial—at least to me. While tempers flared somewhat in cases like United States v. Skrmetti (medical treatments for transgender youth) and CASA v. Trump (birthright citizenship but really universal injunctions), there were fewer blockbuster, highly ideological cases, at least compared to the past few Terms. Compare OT 2024 to OT 2023, which featured the Trump immunity and disqualification cases, plus Loper Bright; OT 2022, which included SFFA v. Harvard (affirmative action), Biden v. Nebraska (student loan forgiveness), 303 Creative v. Elenis (website designer who won’t design gay-marriage websites), and Moore v. Harper (the “independent state legislature” theory); and OT 2021 (Dobbs and Bruen—’nuff said).

So those are my observations and opinions about October Term 2024; readers, what are your thoughts? This is a Notice & Comment post, which means that comments are open to everyone, not just paid subscribers—so please don’t hold back. Thanks!