Who Writes?

Abstract

When half of all of the cases decided by the Supreme Court have a single substantive opinion, it matters a great deal who writes that lead opinion. This chapter looks at lead opinion authorship. It finds that specialization in the relevant area of law is the single most important factor, but that this effect is dampened down in more important cases. Judges with greater workloads are slightly less likely to write lead opinions. In the most important cases, small-p politics does matters: judges who have in the past agreed more with other judges are more likely to write the lead opinion