The Shrunken Docket of the Rehnquist Court
@article{Hellman1996TheSD, title={The Shrunken Docket of the Rehnquist Court}, author={Arthur D. Hellman}, journal={The Supreme Court Review}, year={1996}, volume={1996}, pages={403 - 438} }
From 1971 through 1988, the United States Supreme Court was hearing and deciding about 150 cases each Term. Since the mid-1990s, however, the number of plenary decisions each Term has generally ranged between 75 and 85. How can we explain the shrunken docket? To answer that question, we must identify the changes that have taken place in the cases selected for plenary review and analyze them in a systematic fashion. In this article, I compare the composition of the plenary docket during the…
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