Mirror of Justice

A blog dedicated to the development of Catholic legal theory.
Affiliated with the Program on Church, State & Society at Notre Dame Law School.

Wednesday, June 15, 2016

Will OT 2015 be remembered as The Term of No 5-4s?

In updating some slides for a Rotary Club presentation, I didn't see any 5-4 opinions for the Court this entire Term. For obvious reasons, the Term will end that way as well.

(Note: My source is the Supreme Court's "slip opinions" page. I just went through and scanned quickly for the vote spread in the slip opinions released before Justice Scalia's death on February 13. If I missed anything that should count as a 5-4 opinion for the Court, please let me know. The closest I saw was Campbell-Ewald v. Gomez, which was 6-3 on the judgment, but Justice Thomas concurred only in the judgment. Also, is anyone aware what 5-4 action there has been this term on the "shadow docket"?)

The 4-4 and 5-3 cases are the most obvious candidates for cases that took shape originally as 5-4 cases. But you can't estimate just from the resulting vote split, as it is most likely that the 8-0 decision in Zubik v. Burwell took shape before oral argument as a 5-4 case. We may see other examples of this going forward, as well.

https://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2016/06/will-ot-2015-be-remembered-as-the-term-of-no-5-4s.html

Walsh, Kevin | Permalink