The Best for Last: The Timing of U.S. Supreme Court Decisions

This Article investigates the hypothesis that the most important and, often, controversial and divisive cases-so called "big" casesare disproportionately decided at the end of June.We define a "big case" in one of four ways: front-page coverage in the New York Times; front-page and other coverage in four national newspapers (the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and Chicago Tribune); the number of amicus curiae briefs filed in a case; and the number of subsequent citations by the Supreme Court to its decision in a case.We find a statistically significant association between each measure of a big case and end-of-term decisions even after controlling for the month of oral argument (cases argued later in the term are more likely to be decided near the end of the term) and