DailyWrit

The Supreme Court issued an orders list today and accepted 8 new cases for the OT08 docket. That brings the Court’s tally to a whopping tally of 19, and as Jason Harrow points out over at SCOTUSblog, it took the Court until June last year to fill the current docket to that level.

The recent surge is interesting. In my opinion, the number one reason that Justices accept both ordinary and high-profile cases is that they believe that they (finally) have the votes to win the case. If that theory holds, today’s surge in cases reveals that a group of Justices believe that they can win the big cases that they are taking on and could be an indication of the current state of ‘undecided’ cases. The Court has been holding on to a number of cases that are prime to be released (Boumediene, Medellin, Baze) and an astute Court-watcher might be able to draw some conclusions from today’s orders list.