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 19 cases to be heard between the March and April sitting. The Court will meet for conference again next Friday and may opt to fill the April sitting. If they accept several cases at that sitting, announce them on Friday, and put them on an expedited schedule, that would be a strong indication that the Court would like to fill the April calender. Regardless, the Court will likely announce its April calender in early-February.

Related posts

• Supreme Court Likely to Grant Cert. Petitions Today (January 16, 2009)
• Court Accepts Four New Cases (January 9, 2009)
• The Cert. Pool in Action (October 14, 2008)

If the court doesn’t release orders today and instead announces accepted cases on Monday, that would be an strong indication that it intends to hear only one week’s worth of cases in April and finish the term with fewer cases than it has in the past.

Related posts

• Supreme Court Grants Review In Six Cases; Will Likely Hear Them in April (January 16, 2009)
• The Cert. Pool in Action (October 14, 2008)
• New Cases Likely to be Accepted for OT08 on Friday (January 8, 2009)

Some of the tenets of the “liberal” point of view which commanded the sympathy of a majority of the clerks I knew were: extreme solicitude for the claims of Communists and other criminal defendants, expansion of federal power at the expense of State power, and great sympathy toward any government regulation of business—in short, the political philosophy now espoused by the Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren.

There is the possibility of the bias of the clerks affecting the Court’s certiorari work because of the volume factor described above. I cannot speak for any clerk other than myself in stating as a fact that unconscious bias did creep into his work. Looking back, I must admit that I was not guiltless on this score, and I greatly doubt if many of my fellow clerks were much less guiltless than I. And where such bias did have any effect, because of the political outlook of the group of clerks that I knew, its direction would be to the political “left.”

Rehnquist’s article doesn’t seem particularly provacative today, but at the time it was a heavily political question. The Court had decided Brown a few years earlier (while Rehnquist was a clerk) and the Warren Court was shifting into high gear. If fact, Rehnquist’s 1952 memo to Justice Jackson advocating a vote against Brown was the hot topic of both of his confirmation battles. He always attributed the views in the memo to the Justice himself, but I think a lot of people find that difficult to believe.

When I think of Supreme Court exposés my first thought is always Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong’s The Brethren (1980). At the time, Justices were enraged by the apparent betrayal of hundreds of their former law clerks, but in 1985, following his death, Woodward revealed that Justice Potter Stewart had been his primary source.

(Hat tip to Emperical Legal Studies Blog)

(Update 12/14, 6:36p: I mistakenly mentioned that Adam Liptak is formerly of SCOTUSblog- Adam isn’t associated with SCOTUSblog. I was thinking about Adam Chandler, who wrote for SCOTUSblog some time ago and published an interesting article with Sloan recently.)

Related posts

• The Cert. Pool in Action (October 14, 2008)
• Justice Alito Bows Out of Cert. Pool (October 8, 2008)
• Tag-Team Cage Deathmatch: Roberts/Alito v. Scalia/Thomas (July 16, 2007)

In today’s order’s list (here), Justice Stevens dissents from a number of denials of cert. It seems likely that his rogue behavior has to do with the fact that he has his own clerks write briefs specifically targeted to him. Its relatively rare to see a Justice singled out as dissenting from a denial of cert. and it it should be noted that in today’s list he dissented from four separate denials.

With Justice Alito’s decision to remove himself from the cert. pool, the pool will grow less efficient and it will be interesting to see if his decision will influence future Justices.

Related posts

• Justice Alito Bows Out of Cert. Pool (October 8, 2008)
• Supreme Introductions (December 20, 2008)
• Footnotes in Supreme Court Opinions (December 19, 2008)

Justice Alito’s decision to remove himself from the pool is surprising. As the Junior Justice, it shows that he is coming into his own on the Court and possibly that he may be hoping to get a more customized view of the cases before him. His clerks are more likely to know what he wants to see and he can choose his votes accordingly.

Related posts

• The Cert. Pool in Action (October 14, 2008)
• Supreme Introductions (December 20, 2008)
• Footnotes in Supreme Court Opinions (December 19, 2008)