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