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 [...]

As the term winds down, the Court will begin releasing opinions pretty rapidly. There are 14 cases left and the Court will decide all of them by June 29. Here are a few of the most important left to be decided, sorted by the date they were argued:
Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts (07-591) (Argued November 10, 2008) [...]

The Supreme Court handed down three more opinions this morning, including one which explicitly overruled a generation-old precedent set in Michigan v. Jackson. I’ve uploded a new version of the Term voting chart here.
With 53 opinions handed down and 75 opinion expected, the Court has now handed down an opinion in 70% of the cases [...]

Most news sources are now reporting that President Obama is narrowing in on his nominee for the Supreme Court and will likely announce his decision next week, just before leaving on a lengthy foreign trip in early June.
More specifically, Fox News is hypothesizing that the pick will be announced either Tuesday morning or Friday night [...]

The Court will be holding conference for the next seven consecutive Thursdays (as opposed to the normal friday conference meeting). We will likely see at least a few opinions and accepted cases every week from now until the Court breaks at the end of June. In the short-term, the Court’s opinion hotline also tells us [...]

The news coming out of the Supreme Court is mostly quiet now, as Justices and clerks plow though opinions and the rest of the world speculates about Justice Souter’s replacement. On that note, Jan Crawford Greenburg has a post on her blog here confirming three of the six members of what she claims is the [...]

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 Amendment [...]

The Supreme Court will sit again on Monday morning for the February sitting and will likey release several opinions. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, the Court has released 5-6 opinions in the first week of its February sitting over the last few years, and we have no reason to assume they won’t release [...]

Above the Law is reporting that Justice Souter hasn’t hired any clerks for OT09 and suggests that it may hint towards his retirement. I think this is an example of ATL jumping the gun and overrating their skill as investigative journalists.
The idea of late hiring isn’t totally unfounded though. Just last year, ATL posted Souter’s [...]

I’ve been thinking about my last post about docket placement and the length of time between arguments and opinion (here).
I’m curious about the effect docket placement will have one some of the important cases coming up in April. Whereas the average case takes about 92 days to come out, high-profile cases have always traditionally [...]