Oral Dissents Are on the Upswing at the High Court, Researchers Find
Researchers studying oral dissents by Supreme Court justices have tallied the numbers (they are on the upswing) and divined the meaning (it indicates polarity).
Oral dissents are being dissected by three sets of researchers, the New York Times reports. Among their findings: The average number of dissents per term is increasing slightly, from three during the Burger and Rehnquist courts, to 3.75 in the first four years in which Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. presided.
This term, there has been only one oral dissent so far, when Justice John Paul Stevens dissented in the campaign finance ruling, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.
Stevens has read more dissents aloud than any other current justice—20 in all—a record achieved partly because of his long time on the bench, the Times says. But Ruth Bader Ginsburg leads in percentage terms, reading 10 percent of her dissents from the bench.
One of the new studies, set for publication in Justice System Journal (PDF), says oral dissents can be revealing. “It is an extraordinary event when a justice not only writes in dissent, but purposefully draws attention to that dissent by reading it from the bench,” the authors say. “Dissenting from the bench may indicate that bargaining and accommodation have broken down irreparably.”
