The Court today handed down an opinion in Washington State Grange. Justice Thomas penned a majority opinion that upheld the right of a candidate to ‘declare’ a ‘party preference’ against that parties opposition. Justice Scalia wrote a dissent and was joined by Justice Kennedy.

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 [...]

The Supreme Court today granted cert. in FOX v. FCC, a case revolving around the use of ‘fleeting expletives’ on national TV. Jan Crawford Greenburg has some wonderful analysis on the case on her ABC blog here. She quoted from Miguel Estrada’s (yes, that one) brief for NBC and I just had to reproduce it [...]

The always-insightful New York Times Magazine has an interesting article on the Court entitled “Supreme Court Inc.” Jeffery Rosen takes a look into the Court to determine why it has become so receptive to big business and comes to some pretty interesting, if not particularly unexpected conclusions. Though the current Supreme Court has a well-earned [...]

Justice Ginsburg let her true feelings about drug companies slip during oral arguments in Warner-Lambert Co. v. Kent: JUSTICE GINSBURG: And so the State of Michigan has said: Drug dealers — I’m sorry — drug sellers — (Laughter.) That is her first ‘joke’ of the term (per my calculations.)

I’ve updated my chart with laughter references on the Court. You can find the up-to-date iteration of the full chart here and you can read about my methodology here. Justice Total Roberts 13 Stevens 6 Scalia 51 Kennedy 6 Souter 10 Thomas 0 Ginsburg 1 Breyer 12 Alito 3

The Supreme Court has announced that it will have an expedited release for oral argument audio in DC v. Heller scheduled for March 18. Oral arguments should be online an hour or so after oral arguments conclude and we’ll have analysis as soon as they come online. You should be able to listen to the [...]