Legal Research

SCOTUSblog has released its report on October term, 2008.  Among other things, the report shows how many times each Justice voted with the majority, how many decisions each justice wrote, the ideological alignment of each justice, the court's work load, and the majority/dissent break-down of the court on each case decided. 

A particularly fascinating chart shows the number of times each justice was in agreement or disagreement with every other justice.  Chief Justice Roberts, for example, was in full agreement with Justice Alito 85% of the time, with Justice Stevens 37% of the time.  The memo summarizing the Court's year reveals that while seven circuit courts of appeal had all of their decisions reversed, the Eleventh Circuit had a 100% affirmance rate (granted, this was only three cases).