Justices Staring Down Another Slow Term Despite Head Start

The U.S. Supreme Court is on track for another historically slow term.

The justices have teed up 47 signed opinions so far with just two more opportunities to add cases to the argument docket. That puts them on track to match or slightly exceed last term’s 53 opinions—the lowest number since the Civil War.

The court is well below the 74 signed opinions in argued cases it has averaged since Chief Justice John Roberts took the helm in 2005, according to Adam Feldman, the creator of the blog Empirical SCOTUS.

The “combination of COVID and the usual delay ...