My goal was to publish the final term statistics today, but because the Court will hear rearguments in Citzens United and likely issue an opinion before the beginning of OT09, I’ll have to update these statistics again in September.
I’ve updated the 2008 Term Case Index, which you can always find at the top of the [...]

In a surprise move, the Supreme Court decided to hold a new round of oral arguments in Citizens United focused on whether or not to overrule Austin v. Michigan. It’s very, very rare for the Court to hold rearguments in a case although they will periodically request additional briefing on an issue. In Montejo v. [...]

I’ve compiled a really interesting list featuring the win-loss record of every advocate from the SG’s office and all of the top private advocates. The list is necessarily incomplete but I wanted to give everyone sample of it before I publish the final version tomorrow afternoon when the remaining cases come out.
You can [...]

The Supreme Court will hand down the final three opinions of the term tomorrow when it holds its last public session before its summer recess. The Court will also bid farewell to Justice Souter, as it will likely be his last time being seen publicly as a sitting justice. The three cases are Ricci v. [...]

The Congressional Research Service has published an interesting collection of Judge Sotomayor’s past opinions from the Second Circuit. They come to the conclusion that she is hard to categorize but that she generally has fairly rigid adherence to precedent. [h/t How Appealing]

The Caucus has an interesting post about a series of unlikely events 20 years ago that pitted John Roberts against Michael Jackson. You can find the post here.

By now, you should all know that the Supreme Court handed down their long-awaited decision in Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 v. Holder. In short, the Chief Justice Roberts wrote for a nearly unanimous court holding that Section 5 was bad and faced several constitutional problems, but the Court decided to give Congress [...]

The Court’s decision in Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 v. Holder largely dodged the core constitutional issue in question and has forced me to wonder how the Court will handle a different, though similarly charged, issue in Ricci v. DeStefano. To refresh everyone on the facts in Ricci, a group of white firefighters [...]

I’ve updated the Term Case Index and the Term Count Spreadsheet.
With the release of three opinions today, the Court now has only seven cases left to decide. It will hand down some on Thursday and the final opinions next Monday. Of the remaining cases, the two attracting the most media attention are Safford Unified School [...]

Walter Dellinger, a noted Supreme Court advocate who is most recently received headlines for arguing for the district in DC v. Heller, has submitted the first entry in a new series on Slate called “The Supreme Court Breakfast Table.”
His letter to Dahlia Lithwick and Linda Greenhouse is an interesting summary of the many issues [...]