November 30, 2025 • jed
This is another compassionate release case, like Rutherford discussed earlier. The question in Fernandez, though, is whether claims about the weakness of the evidence against the defendant can count as...
November 24, 2025 • jed
At the time of Rutherford’s conviction, multiple firearm offenses required stacking of convictions: a first offense carried a mandatory minimum and each additional count in the same prosecution led to...
November 18, 2025 • jed
Landor is a Rastafarian who grew his hair out as part of his religious practice. While serving a short term in Louisiana state prison, officials shaved his head, even though...
November 17, 2025 • jed
GEO Group is an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) contractor who is accused by Menocal, a detainee, of forced labor under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. During trial, GEO filed...
November 13, 2025 • jed
Palmquist’s baby declined markedly in health after consuming baby food produced by Hain and sold by Whole Foods. She alleges that the baby food contained heavy metals, such as arsenic...
November 12, 2025 • jed
Suppose a court enters a judgment against you, but it turns out that the court lacked personal jurisdiction over you. Is there a time limit for you to challenge the...
November 11, 2025 • jed
Sovereign immunity generally protects the government from being sued. The Federal Torts Claims Act waives immunity in many circumstances but creates an exception for claims arising out of “ combat...
November 10, 2025 • jed
Suppose a prisoner escapes and is on the run for two years. They’re caught and put back in prison. Do they receive credit towards their original sentence for the time...
November 3, 2025 • jed
Docket Report: Louisiana v. Callais This is the second blockbuster case of the term, and one with potentially profound implications for our elections. About fifteen years ago , the Court...
October 31, 2025 • jed
If the police do not have a warrant, and do not have probable cause that an emergency is occurring, can they enter your home? The police entered the home of...
October 23, 2025 • jed
Update 11/1/25: The experience-3 model continues to predict reverse (56 percent) but there is considerable uncertainty: the ninety percent band of reversal probability runs from 46 percent to 70 percent....
October 22, 2025 • jed
Update 11/1/25: The current model continues to predict reversal (71 percent). Vote ordering remains mostly unchanged, with possible dissents from a small conservative bloc. Experience-3 predictions Initial post: This is...
October 21, 2025 • jed
I spent a fair amount of effort exploring various model architectures and configurations, all of which tend to modestly affect performance relative to the configuration for the reported results. However,...
October 10, 2025 • jed
Update 11/1/25: A shift toward the the possibility the Court votes to affirm in the experience-3 model. The probability of reversal dipped to 49 percent. There is uncertainty about that...
October 9, 2025 • jed
Update 11/1/25: Experience-3 predictions closely resemble earlier predictions: 69 percent chance of reversal. Likely dissent from Thomas; Kagan joins a conservative majority bloc; close votes from Jackson, Sotomayor, and Barrett....
October 9, 2025 • jed
Update 11/1/25: Experience-3 continues to predict reversal (74 percent) with vote ordering roughly as earlier. I would expect 1-2 dissents, possibly by ideological opposites. Experience-3 predictions Update 10/22/25: The updated...
October 9, 2025 • jed
Update 11/1/25: The updated model (experience-3) continues to predict reversal, with roughly the same probability (70 percent). Vote ordering remains roughly the same, with possible dissents from a conservative bloc....
October 9, 2025 • jed
Update 11/1/25: The updated model (experience-3) continues to predict reverse (65 percent), though there is a reasonable amount of uncertainty (ninety percent band of 49-75 percent). Four clear reverse votes...
October 9, 2025 • jed
Update 11/1/25: The updated model (experience-3) continues to predict reverse (61 percent), with vote ordering approximately as before. Gorsuch, Barrett, and Kagan are the closest votes. Experience-3 predictions Update 10/22/25:...
October 6, 2025 • jed
Today is the first day of oral arguments and is my self-imposed deadline for committing to early predictions for the term as it exists. I plan to run another experiment...
September 19, 2025 • jed
Often it will be of interest to predict what the Court would do before oral argument, before amicus or party briefs arrive, or before even a cert petition. A lower...
September 18, 2025 • jed
Most published Supreme Court vote predictions include near-term information, including oral argument and amicus data. The earlier predictions I posted included that information, too, and using that information the model...
September 11, 2025 • jed
Update 11/1/25: See the methods page for current model. Initial post: It is notoriously difficult to predict Supreme Court votes. The leading algorithmic approaches produce vote-level predictions with about 70...
September 9, 2025 • jed
Thanks for visiting! A little about me -- I am a professor at Cornell, where I teach and research in public law and quantitative methods. Most of my recent work...