Under the Hood of the American Supreme Court: Identifying Authorship in Unsigned Opinions

The U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) issues 10-15% of its opinions unsigned, concealing authorship. Traditionally, unveiling authors required the posthumous release of Justices' personal papers.

We trained our AI algorithm to achieve real-time authorship identification, encompassing 17 Justices and 4069 opinions from 1994-2023. Our algorithm identified the authors of the March 2024 Trump v. Anderson case which enabled Donald Trump to run for office.

Moreover, our algorithm unveiled the authorship in significant unsigned COVID-19 era cases, determined individual parts of the joint dissent in the Obamacare Case (2012), and discerned the authors of the landmark cases of Bush v. Gore (2000).

Applications range from legal research to decoding SCOTUS internal dynamics. Compared to prior methods, our study demonstrates a substantially higher accuracy rate of 91% and over a much longer period, offering timely insights into the nuances of SCOTUS decision-making.