Yesterday, we turned from examining the sources of the Court’s docket to looking at what the data tells us about the Court’s decision-making process. There, we determined that the Court’s overall lag time has been relatively constant for at least ten years. When the Court hands down a decision in three to four months, the reasonable inference is that the decision is unanimous. But what about when the Court is divided?
When there are dissenters, decisions typically take six months or more from oral argument to opinion:
Next time, we’ll turn to the question of the Court’s dissent rate.
Image courtesy of Flickr by Gerry Lauzon (no changes).