DailyWrit

I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’m getting antsy waiting for the first substantive opinion (from an argued case) of the year. Its almost December now and the Court hasn’t released anything save for a 4-4 split ‘decision’ in Tom F. (here) and a clarification of a lower court misunderstanding arising from the 2005 […]

The Supreme Court today released a press release announcing that they will be providing the audio recording of oral arguments in Boumediene and Al-Odah as early as possible.
Its nice to see that the Court is embracing the internet and recognizing the advantage that speedily released arguments provide. The transcript will appear online at its normal […]

The Supreme Court today released an orders list in which it agreed to hear the DC gun control case, District of Columbia v. Heller. It narrowed the questions presented to the following:
Whether the following provisions - D.C. Code §§ 7-2502.02(a)(4), 22-4504(a), and 7-2507.02 - violate the Second Amendment rights of individuals who are not […]

After finding the most talkative Justice, I was interested in finding the funniest Justice. According to my calculations, there were 51 total references to (Laughter.) in the court’s first two months of arguements. Here is the breakdown:

Case
JR
JPS
AS
AK
DS
CT
RBG
SB
SA
COUNSEL
TOTAL

Washington
1

2
3

Tom F.

0

Gall

1

2
3

Kimbrough

1

1

2

Torres
3

1

4

Santos

1

1

Watson

1
1

1

3

Stoneridge

1

1

Medellin

1
1

1

3

Klein

0

Ali

1

1

Williams

1

1

1
3

Logan

0

Danforth
1
2
3

6

CSX

2

1

3

Davis
2
1
1

1

1

6

John R.
1
1
1

1
4

Fed. Ex.

4

1
5

Hall

1
1

1
3

TOTAL
8
6
17
2
4
0
0
5
1
8
51

No surprises here. Scalia talks almost twice as much as everyone else. […]

I’ve been thinking a lot about the Michael Richards death penalty case. Richard’s attorney’s had computer difficulties and despite notifying the proper authorities, the judge in charge, Judge Sharon ‘Killer’ Keller slammed the door on them and forced the execution to proceed.
There are things that we can do. For years now, there has been a […]

Two months into the term, the Supreme Court has held oral arguments in 19 different cases. After reading a few of the transcripts, I thought it would be interesting to see which Justices spoke most often during oral arguments.
I found transcripts from the usual place and I copied the text into TextMate. From there, I […]

The WSJ Law Blog predicted that Justice Thomas would speak this morning during oral arguments. Unfortunately, they were wrong. I expected him to speak last year during one of the school board cases or during Morse.
As my avid readers will know, Justice Thomas hasn’t spoken during oral arguments in quite some time. The last time […]

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments (transcript) last week in Danforth v. Minnesota.
The debate in Danforth revolves around whether or not state courts need to respect boundaries set by the Supreme Court. In the 1989 case, Teague v. Lane, the Court held that their opinions cannot be retroactively applied by federal courts to grant defendants […]

UK’s The Telegraph created lists of the 100 most influential conservatives and the most influential liberals leading into the 2008 elections. John Roberts made number #8 on the conservative list, Antonin Scalia came in at #62, and Clarence Thomas came in at #85. John Paul Stevens, despite claiming to be a conservative, came in at […]