I took a look at the S Ct Journal for for 1988–2022 (cases docketed during term: paid cases), and then for 2023 used the figure 1375 (there is a 23-1375 docketed, but no 23-1376). For OT1988–OT1999, my data show over 2000 paid cases docketed each term except OT1990, but your chart seems to show fewer than 2000 in each of those terms.
I took a look at the S Ct Journal for for 1988–2022 (cases docketed during term: paid cases), and then for 2023 used the figure 1375 (there is a 23-1375 docketed, but no 23-1376). For OT1988–OT1999, my data show over 2000 paid cases docketed each term except OT1990, but your chart seems to show fewer than 2000 in each of those terms.
When I graph the data and add a linear trend line, I see a pretty notable decline in paid cases.
As the post notes, there *was* a decline in paid cases between the 1990s and the early 2000s. But by the mid-2000s, the total paid docket had stabilized between 1481 and 1741 (with some back-and-forth between those poles), a range encompassing *every* term between OT03 and OT21. Just to say that slightly differently, if your baseline is the early 2000s (and treating OT2022 as an outlier), there just hasn't been anywhere near the kind of drop-off in paid cases that would explain the drop-off in rulings in paid cases.
And if the point is that paid cases have declined significantly since the 1990s, that's undoubtedly *true*; it just doesn't explain why the Court's output of merits rulings has declined so significantly only in the last few years.
I took a look at the S Ct Journal for for 1988–2022 (cases docketed during term: paid cases), and then for 2023 used the figure 1375 (there is a 23-1375 docketed, but no 23-1376). For OT1988–OT1999, my data show over 2000 paid cases docketed each term except OT1990, but your chart seems to show fewer than 2000 in each of those terms.
When I graph the data and add a linear trend line, I see a pretty notable decline in paid cases.
My chart: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vQV-ST2UWm0b8HMSFb6CHc9fNCvJvfdTAcww7CaRa5WrhqEpQi6_60iq4x6X8bcjTYBBCjxF4nb6xYf/pubchart?oid=1804057280&format=interactive
As I just responded on Twitter:
As the post notes, there *was* a decline in paid cases between the 1990s and the early 2000s. But by the mid-2000s, the total paid docket had stabilized between 1481 and 1741 (with some back-and-forth between those poles), a range encompassing *every* term between OT03 and OT21. Just to say that slightly differently, if your baseline is the early 2000s (and treating OT2022 as an outlier), there just hasn't been anywhere near the kind of drop-off in paid cases that would explain the drop-off in rulings in paid cases.
And if the point is that paid cases have declined significantly since the 1990s, that's undoubtedly *true*; it just doesn't explain why the Court's output of merits rulings has declined so significantly only in the last few years.