Abstract How do U.S. Supreme Court justices use legal scholarship? In recent landmark decisions like Trump v. CASA (2025) and Loper Bright v. Raimondo (2024), the justices cited several pieces of legal scholarship in their opinions. Yet little is known of how and how often the members of the Court engage in this practice. In this article, I provide new data on the Court’s citation to legal scholarship under the Roberts Court from 2005 to 2023. I find that there is a strong upward trend in the number of citations to legal scholarship, with large increases in more recent years. Further, there is an increase in the percentage of opinions by the Court that cite legal scholarship. Also, the justices are using the most legal scholarship in some of the Court’s most recent salient decisions. Additionally, the justices overwhelmingly cite legal scholarship published in the most elite law review journals, with Harvard Law Review and Yale Law Journal emerging as the preferred outlets. Lastly, the data shows that the distribution of law professors cited by the justices is highly skewed, with a small number of individuals accounting for a disproportionately large share of citations, to which most share an association with the Federalist Society. The data is clear that the justices have altered the way in which they use legal scholarship in their opinions. This article sets the foundation for future theoretical work on the Court’s use of legal scholarship in its opinions.
Justin Burnworth (Fri,) studied this question.