ACS on Death Penalty and the Supreme Court

ACS Blog has a little gem, "The Dominance of the Death Penalty on the Decreasing Supreme Court Docket."  It's written by Martin Magnusson.

The Supreme Court's docket has dramatically decreased in the past twenty years. When Chief Justice Rehnquist assumed leadership of the Court in 1986, it disposed of 175 cases. That number has steadily fallen. Last year, the Court disposed of only 82 cases.

Tom Goldstein recently noted on SCOTUSblog that we are “on the cusp of the greatest shortfall in filling the court’s docket in recent memory, and likely in its modern history.”

The response was immediate. Many began proposing reasons for the downward trend. Some contended that the decline was due to the Solicitor General's office, which has a solid track record of having its cert petitions granted, filing much fewer petitions. Other argued that it reflected a deeply divided Court. While some pointed to Congress passing fewer complex statutes, others pointed to the cert pool procedure that the Court uses. Some contended that the declining docket reflects the comity of a judiciary predominantly appointed by Republican administrations.

Although many different reasons for the decline were proposed, one thing is indisputable: the legal blogosphere was buzzing!

While the shrinking docket is of profound importance, an equally important issue is the composition of that reduced docket. The Supreme Court has focused a great deal of its recent attention on the death penalty. Indeed, on January 17, the Court heard three death penalty cases. This is a substantial number, especially in light of the current docket size. Even more interesting, each of the three cases were from the state of Texas.

A hat tip to Doug Berman at Sentencing Law and Policy .

Comments

[rothmatisseko]

Even more interesting than that:

# Texas has killed three of the four inmates executed this year.

# Texas will kill all three prisoners expected to be executed in February.

# Texas will kill four of the five prisoners expected to be executed in March.

For every one prisoner executed by all other states, Texas kills five.