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53 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 1219 (2011-2012)
Explaining the Supreme Court's Shrinking Docket

handle is hein.journals/wmlr53 and id is 1229 raw text is: EXPLAINING THE SUPREME COURT'S SHRINKING DOCKET RYAN J. OWENS* & DAVID A. SIMON** ABSTRACT In recent years, the United States Supreme Court has decided fewer cases than at any other time in its recent history. Scholars and practitioners alike have criticized the drop in the Court's plenary docket. Some even believe that the Court has reneged on its duty to clarify and unify the law. A host of studies examine potential reasons for the Court's change in docket size, but few rely on an empirical analysis of this change and no study examines the correlation between ideological homogeneity and docket size. In a comprehensive study, the authors analyze ideological and contextual factors to determine the conditions that are most likely to influence the size of the plenary docket. Drawing on empirical data from every Supreme Court Term between 1940 and 2008, the authors find that both ideological and contextual factors have led to the Court's declining plenary docket. First, a Court composed of Justices who share largely the same world view is likely to hear forty-two more cases per Term than an ideologically fractured Court. Second, internal and external mechanisms, such as membership change and mandatory jurisdiction, are also important. Congress's decision to remove much of the Court's mandatory appellate jurisdiction is associated with the Court deciding roughly fifty-four fewer cases per * Lyons Family Faculty Scholar & Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison. We would like to thank Justice David Stras of the Minnesota Supreme Court for his assistance with this Article. Justice Stras provided some of the data and analysis that were later incorporated into this Article with respect to the cert pool and Congress's elimination of most of the Supreme Court's mandatory appellate jurisdiction in 1988. Although he is not a co-author, we thank Justice Stras for his help during the formative, planning stages of this Article. ** Fellow, the Project on Law & Mind Sciences, Harvard Law School; Ph.D. Candidate, University of Cambridge; LL.M., Harvard Law School; J.D., Chicago-Kent College of Law; B.A., University of Michigan. 1219

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