8420275365_d14df0c7a0_zSpecial concurrences have become slightly less common on the Court recently, but this is not an indication of any increase in the level of agreement among the Justices. On the contrary, as we noted above, the unanimity rate drifted somewhat lower during much of this period. Rather, most of the decrease is attributable to Justice Kilbride writing fewer concurrences during his term as Chief.

Table 29 A

The Court’s special concurrences continued to run quite short:

Table 29 B

Next week, we’ll take a look at the Justices’ dissents between 2010 and 2014, and begin our review of the Justices’ voting patterns and agreement rates.

Image courtesy of Flickr by Paul Sableman (no changes).