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 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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Today was the final day for arguments during OT08 and the Court heard arguments in Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 v. Holder. You can find the transcript here.
The arguments made were certainly very interesting. Justice Scalia, while criticizing the near-unanimity with which Congress passed the VRA extension, made this observation:
You know, the Israeli [...]

I’ve created a table to shows which opinions have been thus far released in the term based on sitting and majority author. You can find the table here. You can find the .xls data here and the .numbers statistics here.

It’s hard to make too many predictions right now. Justice Kennedy will likely write the opinion [...]

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 [...]