A commentator on my last conferencing post picked up on an important part of the distribution question that I had intentionally omitted. How does the number of conferences effect the chances of a petition eventually being granted? I looked at 550 cases docketed on the paid docket from July 2009 – June 2010 (in other [...]

The Supreme Court granted review in three cases this morning, including a challenge to the Federal government’s ban on the distribution of videos involving animal cruelty in US v. Stevens. Volokh has a great discussion of the issues at play here. Thanks to SCOTUSblog, we have access to the cert petitions. Opinion Below Cert. Petition [...]

[UPDATE]: On February 25, 2009, I filed a brief as amicus curiae in this case. You can find it here. Last week, the court granted review in Ricci v. DeStefano. In 2003, the city of New Haven attempted to promote a number of firefighters to the ranks of captain and lieutenant based on a number [...]

The Supreme Court accepted six new cases and placed them on expedited review so that they can be heard in the April sitting. You can find the orders list here. The Court can hear, on average, 12 cases per sitting (2 cases per day over 6 days.) As it currently stands, the Court has accepted [...]

The Court today accepted four new cases including a potentially landmark voting rights case. The cases will almost certainly be heard in April and you can see the orders list here. The court put each of the cases on a expedited brief schedule in order to fit the cases on to the April session from [...]

The Court today accepted a case revolving around the domestic detention of a legal immigrant from Qutar suspected of having terrorist ties. The most interesting thing about the case, al-Marri v. Pucciarelli, is that it will not be heard until after President Obama takes office so President-elect Obama will have the opportunity to revise the [...]

On Monday the court denied review in Walker v. Georgia, a case revolving around the court’s proportionality standard applied to the death penalty. The court has long struggled to find an adequate means of countering racist bias within the capital system and there is little doubt that the issue will rear its ahead again in [...]

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 released an orders list today (here) and they accepted three new cases. Carcieri v. Kempthorne – Whether or not the federal government must afford Indian Tribes that are not officially recognized the same protections they offer officially recognized tribes. (Petition for Cert.) Arizona v. Gant – The Court accepted review on this [...]

In the first Orders List of the new year, the Supreme Court accepted review in six new cases. You can find it on the Court’s website here. They include three sentencing cases, one Indian Tribes case, one civil RICO case, and a case about Article III standing. Over the next few days I’ll be offering [...]