As we’ve done for past terms (here and here), we’ll do a statistical recap of the Supreme Court’s 2024–2025 term in two parts. Today, we’re looking at numbers for categories other than those relating to the court’s opinions. The stats were gathered by reviewing blog posts about the court’s conferences during the term. Miscounting by me is always a possibility.
The Supreme Court doesn’t have an official term, unlike the U.S. Supreme Court, but September 1 to August 31 is a logical unofficial term because the court doesn’t hear oral arguments in July or August and, due to the 90-day rule, opinions in cases argued before the summer hiatus normally file by the end of August. (Regarding opinion filings, this was not a “normal” term, but more about that in part II.)
Particularly notable for this term were the number of dissents from denials of petitions for review or for habeas corpus and the considerable uptick in depublications.
Straight grants
There were 48 straight grants, 26 in civil cases and 22 in criminal cases. (In 2023–2024, there were 35 straight grants, 22 civil and 13 criminal. For 2022–2023 — 46 straight grants, 27 civil and 19 criminal.)
Included in the 48 are some review-granted equivalents: one order to show cause in an original writ proceeding, an agreement to answer a question posed by the Ninth Circuit, an undecided appeal the Supreme Court transferred to itself from the Court of Appeal, and a grant-and-hold case that was un-held.
Grant-and-Holds
The court granted-and-held 344 criminal cases and 31 civil cases. (For 2023-2024, there were 193 criminal cases and 45 civil cases that were granted and held. It was 177 and 32 for the 2022–2023 term.) The grant-and-holds were waiting for a total of 28 criminal lead cases and 13 civil lead cases.
Included in the 344 and 31 grant-and-holds are 15 cases that were granted and transferred for reconsideration not long after opinions were filed in the lead cases.
The lead case for 197 of the 344 criminal grant-and-holds or grant-and-transfers was People v. Rhodius (2025) 17 Cal.5th 1050 (see here).
Depublications
The court depublished 22 Court of Appeal opinions, 13 in civil cases and nine in criminal cases. (There were just five depublications the previous term, three in civil cases and two in criminal cases. In 2022–2023, there were 15, 11 in civil cases and four in criminal cases.)
Not counted are opinions depublished by a Supreme Court grant-and-transfer order directing the Court of Appeal to vacate its prior opinion (see here).
Recorded dissents
Despite somewhat of an increase in dissenting opinions, the court was still mostly harmonious in its decisions. However, if you want to see disagreements, the place to look is the conferences, when the court determines which cases it will decide.
During the 2024–2025 term, justices recorded 159 dissenting votes from denials of review or habeas corpus in 98 separate cases. 143 of those votes were in 83 criminal cases and the other 16 were in 15 different civil cases. (In 2023-2024, there were 66 recorded dissents, 58 in criminal cases and eight in civil cases. The term before that saw 33 recorded dissents, 22 criminal and 11 civil.)
The numbers are skewed a bit because many of the 98 criminal and 15 civil cases raised the same or similar issues. For example, Justices Goodwin Liu and Kelli Evans — by far the leaders in dissents — repeatedly sought review in a large number of juvenile and youthful offender sentencing cases.
Three petitions — all in criminal cases — garnered three votes. There were two votes in 55 cases, all but one of them criminal.
Here is the tally of dissenting votes by justice:
- Justice Liu: 69 dissenting votes (68 in criminal cases; 1 in a civil case.) He was joined by Justice Evans in 53 of those cases, by Justice Leondra Kruger in two, by Justice Joshua Groban in two, and by Justice Martin Jenkins in one. 14 were solo dissenting votes.
- Justice Evans: 63 dissenting votes (all in criminal cases). She joined Justice Liu in 53 cases, Justice Groban in four, and Justice Kruger in two. Seven were solo votes.
- Justice Groban: 22 dissenting votes (12 in civil and 10 in criminal). He joined Justice Evans in four and Justice Liu in two cases. 17 were solo votes.
- Justice Carol Corrigan: two dissenting votes (both in civil cases). Both votes were solos.
- Justice Kruger: two dissenting votes. Both were with Justices Liu and Evans in criminal cases.
- Justice Jenkins: one dissenting vote, with Justice Liu, in a criminal case.
- Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero didn’t record any dissenting votes.
Separate Statements
Occasionally, a justice will publish a separate statement when the court denies review. There were nine of those during the term.
- Justice Liu — who revived the separate statement practice in 2015 — filed five separate statements, three in dissents in criminal cases and two concurring statements, one in a criminal case and one in a civil case. Justice Evans signed one of his concurring statements and all three of his dissents. One concurrence was a solo statement.
- Justice Evans wrote three separate statements, all in criminal cases. Two were concurrences and one was in dissent. Justices Corrigan, Liu, Kruger, Groban, and Jenkins signed one concurrence. Justice Liu signed all three of her separate statements.
- Justice Groban issued one separate statement, a concurrence that was signed by Justices Liu and Evans.
Clemency approvals
The court granted requests by Governor Gavin Newsom to allow him to pardon 10 people and commute seven sentences, including commutations of two life-without-parole sentences. It denied no requests. The grants were state constitutional prerequisites to the clemencies, because the 17 had been “twice convicted of a felony.”
[September 18 update: “Liu and Evans drive surge in Supreme Court dissents over criminal review denials”]
