Law360 has Supreme Court Caseload Hits 160-Year Low, which begins:
Not since the Civil War has the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in as few cases as it will this term — the latest milestone for the court's shrinking docket, and one attorneys say might have more to do with the high court's culture than its expanding emergency appeals caseload.
- As of Monday, the justices have agreed to hear oral arguments in 64 individual cases this October term.
- This term's caseload is well below the average 75 cases per term the Supreme Court has been reviewing since Chief Justice John Roberts took the helm in 2005, and nine fewer individual cases than last term's docket. It is the smallest set of cases the high court has reviewed in a single term since the October term in 1865, the year the Civil War ended, according to data from Washington University School of Law's Supreme Court Database.
- The Supreme Court has steadily granted review in fewer and fewer cases since the October 1988 term, when Congress passed the Supreme Court Case Selections Act and eliminated the right to appeal state court judgments to the nation's highest court. Since then, the number of individual cases reviewed each term has been up to the discretion of the justices and has dropped from 168 during the 1988 term to 64 this term.
UVA School of Law reports Prominent Appellate Attorney Cate Stetson ’94 Joins Faculty
The latest issue of LA Lawyer (Jan/Feb 2026:1) has Gary Wax's Practice Tips: On The Record: How to Safeguard Cases for Appeal
Trials move fast, so it's no surprise that preserving the record for appeal sometimes slips through the cracks. Gary J. Wax offers practice tips for how to avoid common record preservation mistakes, and how to ensure cases are safeguarded for appeal.
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