[7] The increase in traffic coincided with the Supreme Court's reversal of course on June 29, 2007, when it unexpectedly announced it would hear the Guantanamo Bay detainees' challenges to the Military Commissions Act of 2006.

"[8] Edward Adams, editor and publisher of the American Bar Association's ABA Journal, said that SCOTUSblog is one of the best law blogs.

In 2009 Paul Krugman of The New York Times wrote of the site's coverage of the Sonia Sotomayor nomination, "Without SCOTUS[blog], the whole debate might have been about wise Latina women and Newt [Gingrich]'s Tweets from Auschwitz.

"[11] During the week of the Affordable Care Act hearings at the Supreme Court in March 2012, the site had one million hits owing to its extensive coverage of the arguments in both legalese and "In Plain English".

SCOTUSblog has received some criticism for potential conflicts of interest concerning Goldstein, his litigation practice, and the blog's coverage of court matters.

[14] It also won the 2012 Society of Professional Journalists (Sigma Delta Chi) prize for deadline reporting by an independent (non-affiliated) source for its coverage of the announcement of the Supreme Court's Affordable Care Act decision.