A glimpse behind the curtain at the Supreme Court
One of our podcast listeners sent us a copy of a very interesting speech given by Justice Sanders back when he first joined the Court. In the podcast (Lies, Damn Lies & Statistics) Mike, Trent and I discussed the long wait times on court opinions. Sander's speech helps explain the time lag with a detailed behind-the-scenes look at the journey a case goes through from start to finish. It includes such salient tidbits as:
Who the assignment judge is [for a particular case], is a closely guarded secret of the court. To make attorney guesswork more difficult, law clerks in addition to the assignment justice’s law clerks typically attend the oral argument.
So clerk-counting is apparently pointless.
The speech is from 1996, so some procedures have likely changed. But I'm betting that much of the path a case takes is still the same today.
