Neil M. Richards (Washington University) has posted The Supreme Court Justice and "Boring" Cases, 4 Green Bag 2d 401 (2001), on SSRN.  Here is the abstract:

This is a short essay discussing the phenomenon of boring cases at the Supreme Court. It examines two letters written by Supreme Court Justices to sick colleagues – a 1903 letter from Chief Justice E.D. White to William Day, and a 1941 letter from William O. Douglas to Hugo Black. The essay argues that one true and underappreciated measure of the worth of a Supreme Court Justice is not merely their ability to be (or at least appear to be) brilliant in the once-a-decade blockbuster cases. Instead, in selecting Supreme Court Justices, we should look just as much at their ability to work diligently on the vast majority of the cases which make up the Supreme Court’s docket – including boring ones.