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Every one of the 9,420 decisions from the 1946–2026 terms, filterable by term, issue area, chief-justice era, vote split, winner and direction — each with its own page.
The Supreme Court Database · 1946–2026
Explore the U.S. Supreme Court through data, cases, and voting patterns.
Search and filter Supreme Court decisions by term, issue area, chief-justice era, vote split, and outcome — now alongside a daily-refreshed pool of legal news, recent opinions, and judiciary activity.
Photo: Joe Ravi · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons · All photo credits
The shrinking docket
The Court decides less than half as many cases as it once did
Scroll through five moments in the Court’s caseload, 1946 to 2026. Every figure below is computed from the Supreme Court Database.
A full docket
For four decades the Court worked through a caseload that would be unrecognisable today. Across the 1946–1985 terms it issued an average of 146 signed decisions a term, and in 29 of the 80 terms in this dataset it cleared 140 or more.
The high-water mark
The peak came in October Term 1967, when the Court decided 197 cases — more than three times what it now hears in a year. Certiorari was close to obligatory in whole categories of appeals, and the Court was still absorbing the litigation wave that followed the Warren Court’s criminal-procedure and civil-rights rulings.
The contraction
From the late 1980s the line falls and never recovers. Congress made the Court’s appellate jurisdiction almost entirely discretionary, the Justices took fewer cases, and the docket settled into a new normal. The 2025 term produced 74 decisions; 2022 produced 58, the smallest in this dataset.
Fewer cases, closer calls
The cases that survive the cut are harder. Bare 5–4 majorities made up 13.1% of decisions in the 1946–1985 terms and 17.3% from 2005 onward — a smaller docket weighted more heavily toward the questions that split the bench.
What the record holds
Across all 9,420 decisions in this dataset, 2,726 were unanimous 9–0 and 1,408 came down 5–4. The last ten terms average 67 decisions apiece. Counts through the 2023 term are recomputed from the Supreme Court Database. Later terms count the Court’s slip opinions, and a 5–4 is counted only when a vote lineup is on record.
Refreshed daily
The Court right now
A daily-refreshed pool of legal news, recent opinions, and judiciary activity — an independent aggregation of public data, baked into the page at build time.
In the legal press
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Supreme Court Clerks Who Become Law Professors (2012-2026)
Yesterday, I wrote about the lateral hiring market. Here, I want to focus on the entry-level hiring market. Since 2012,… The post Supreme Court Clerks Who Become Law Professors (2012-2026) appeared first on Reason Magazine.
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Groups ask Supreme Court to leave lower court order in place halting border wall construction in southwestern Texas
The plaintiffs challenging the Trump administration’s efforts to build a border wall in the Big Bend region of southwestern Texas urged the Supreme Court on Thursday to leave in place an order by a federal trial judge in El Paso…
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Court to hear argument in religious discrimination challenge brought by Catholic preschools in Colorado
The Supreme Court will hear oral argument on Nov. 3 in a challenge brought by Catholic preschools in Colorado, which argue that their exclusion from Colorado’s universal preschool program is a form of religious discrimination in violation…
Four ways in
Start anywhere
The same Supreme Court Database, approached four different ways.
Analyse
Trends & patterns
Caseload by term, the 5–4 rate, majority-size distribution, issue areas by decade, petitioner win rate, and decision direction — six charts over 81 terms.
Compare
Justices
Tenure, participation and voting profile for all 40 justices who have sat since 1946, with a page for each.
Understand
Learn the data
Plain-language explainers on 5–4 decisions, SCDB coding, issue areas, decision direction, and what petitioner and respondent mean.
Where this comes from
An independent read on a public record
The core structured dataset is the Supreme Court Database (SCDB), version 2024 Release 01 — maintained by Harold J. Spaeth, Lee Epstein, and collaborators at Washington University in St. Louis. It covers orally argued cases from the 1946 through 2023 terms. Decisions from later terms are added from the Supreme Court’s slip opinions, with a vote lineup only when the Oyez Project publishes one. Live blocks are credited on each section.
SCOTUS Decisions is not a government website and is not affiliated with or endorsed by the U.S. Supreme Court, Congress, the Federal Reserve, or any agency. Photographs of federal buildings and portraits of justices are used under the licences listed on the credits page — public domain or Creative Commons, none of them a government endorsement. Every image is credited on the credits page.