Bonus 95: The (Busy) Summer of 2024

If it feels like the Supreme Court is handling a larger number of significant emergency applications during its summer recess than in any recent summer, that's only because it is.

Welcome back to the weekly bonus content for “One First.” Although Monday’s regular newsletter will remain free for as long as I’m able to do this, much of the bonus content is behind a paywall as an added incentive for those who are willing and able to support the work that goes into putting this newsletter together every week. I’m grateful to those of you who are already paid subscribers, and hope that those of you who aren’t will consider a paid subscription if and when your circumstances permit:

For today’s bonus issue, I wanted to take a deeper (and more quantitative) look at the anecdotal sense that I’ve written about in prior issues—that the justices are handling more (and more significant) emergency applications during their summer recess this year than has been the norm, even recently. It turns out that the numbers are striking. Not only is this summer going to blow the last three out of the water with regard to the number of significant emergency applications the justices end up deciding, but the Court will shortly pass the total number of emergency applications it resolved during the summer of 2020—when the justices were seemingly inundated with COVID-related emergency requests on everything from elections to prison conditions to restrictions on religious services.

That the 2024 summer recess is going to end up being even busier will not only have implications for the new term to come, but it reinforces the extent to which the justices really ought to consider the messages that their behavior on emergency applications appears to be sending to the litigants who keep filing them and the lower courts who keep provoking them.

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