The new Supreme Court term starts today, and half an hour before the first arguments began, the justices released their annual “summer clean-up” orders list.

These are the grants or denials from just about all of the petitions that reached the Court during the summer months. This year the number of cert. denials topped 900!

Historically, the chances of getting your case granted at this time of year is lower than at other times, since, and the data bears this out, the justices’ new law clerks, who begin their one-year tenures in July, act a bit more timidly at the start of their terms and are less likely to recommend grants to their bosses.

This year, cert. was granted in nine cases (p. 7), and the justices were recused in 31 petitions.

Fix the Court, as we do each term, is tracking the reasons behind the recusals since SCOTUS doesn’t volunteer them, as we believe it should. This year, we’re also including in the sheet the missed recusals.

View our OT22 recusals spreadsheet here.