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Nine Justices, Ten Years: A Statistical Retrospective, Robert J. Jackson Jr., Thiruvendran Vignarajah

Faculty Scholarship

The 2003 Term marked an unprecedented milestone for the Supreme Court: for the first time in history, nine Justices celebrated a full decade presiding together over the nation's highest court.' The continuity of the current Court is especially striking given that, on average, one new Justice has been appointed approximately every two years since the Court's expansion to nine members in 1837.2 Although the Harvard Law Review has prepared statistical retrospectives in the past,3 the last decade presents a rare opportunity to study the Court free from the disruptions of intervening appointments.

Presented here is a review of the 823 …