While I will readily accept that my end-of-term comments are even less relevant than usual because they are so belligerently late, I still think I have a few interesting things to point out about the nearly-finished term. First, and least controversially, Justice Kennedy still controls an important position in the middle of the Court. Justice [...]

Justices Breyer and Scalia went at it today during oral arguments in Horne v. Flores. Scene: Justice Breyer brings up a set of statistics from the record. JUSTICE SCALIA: Excuse me. I am not following this exchange because I don’t understand whether the — the statewide percentage is the statewide percentage of English learners or [...]

The Supreme Court continued its quest to strike at Article III taxpayer standing today in its opinion in Summers v. Earth Island Institute (here). In 1968, the Court ruled 8-1 in Flast v. Cohen (here) that Florence Flast and others could file suit against the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare for violating the First [...]

(Nearly) every majority opinion features a short introduction before it jumps into the standard I, II, III, IV, etc structure. Some Justices simply introduce the facts very briefly (Scalia), while others discuss the procedural history (Thomas), and others discuss the underlying issue in the case (Souter.) I took a look at all of the cases [...]

The use footnotes has been a topic of quiet conversation around the judiciary for some time now. One group of Judges and practitioners (and an even larger percentage of students) find them to be burdensome and often unnecessary. Others think they serve as useful guides and make opinions more readable. Footnotes largely come in two [...]

Once again, I’ve conjured up some charts marking how often each Justice spoke during oral arguments in the first half of the term. You can find a detailed look into my methodology here but to summarize, these numbers represent the number of times ‘JUSTICE ______’ is mentioned in the oral argument transcripts posted on the [...]

Over the course of the past week, both the blogosphere and mainstream media have been spending quite a bit of time over at the Supreme Court rumor mill. There has been a lot of buzz about two cases concerned with president-elect Obama’s citizenship, Donofrio v. Wells (08A407) and Wrotnowski v. Bysiewicz (08A469). The applications for [...]

Just as everyone thought the Obama Citizen controversy was over in the Courts, another case has popped up. Even though I don’t share his concern, thanks to commentor ‘Ted‘ for bringing the latest case to my attention. Wrotnowski v. Bysiewicz is a motion for injunction filed by Cort Wrotnowski against Susan Bysiewicz, Secretary of State [...]

During arguments this week in Bell v. Kelly, Justice Scalia chided Richard Bress for not including a particular part of the statute in his briefs to the court. Unfortunately, Bress had included the statutes in his briefs, an oversight Justice Scalia apologized for as oral arguments wound down: JUSTICE SCALIA: Mr. Bress, I want to [...]

Earlier tonight, Senators John McCain and Barack Obama joined Pastor Rick Warren at his California megachurch for an event pegged as “The Saddleback Civil Forum on the Presidency.” The interviews, each an hour in length, were separated by thirty-six tense seconds in which the presumptive nominees shared the stage (and an awkward hug [video here!]). [...]