In today’s New York Times, Linda Greenhouse reports here on the Supreme Court’s consideration of appeals from Guantánamo detainees at today’s Conference.

At the WSJ.com Law Blog, Peter Lattman has this post about the Court’s decision to grant cert in the securities case, Stoneridge Investment Partners v. Scientific-Atlanta.

The Associated Press has this article on the Michigan High School Athletic Association’s gender equity lawsuit that is under review at today’s Conference. Ken Kobayashi of the Honolulu Advertiser reports here about a case regarding a Hawaii school’s admissions policy, which will be reviewed at the 4/13 Conference.

Kent Scheidegger reports here at Crime & Consequences that bottom-side briefs were filed yesterday in Panetti v. Quarterman.

In Brief, the online magazine of the Virginia Law Review, has this essay by Judge William Fletcher of the Ninth Circuit analyzing the Supreme Court’s 2004 decision in Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain, as well as responses to Judge Fletcher’s essay from Professors Ernest Young, John Harrison, and Anthony Bellia.

UPDATE 8:30 p.m. Because the Court closed for the day some hours ago, it became apparent that there were no immediate orders out of the Friday Conference. All results will emerge at 10 a.m. Monday.

The Court is holding a private Conference today to discuss new and pending cases. Our list of “Petitions to Watch” for this Conference can be found here.

Several scenarios involving the Boumediene/Al Odah detainee cases, which are being considered by the Court today, can be found in an earlier post here or in today’s New York Times here. Additionally, the petitioners in Hamdan v. Gates and Khadr v. Bush have asked the Court once again to consider their petition at today’s Conference (see here).

If any orders relating to these or other cases are issued this afternoon, we will post them promptly. Regular orders relating to today’s Conference are scheduled to be released Monday at 10 AM eastern.

In today’s Washington Post, Robert Barnes and Carrie Johnson report here on Tellabs Inc. v. Makor Issues & Rights; Bloomberg News has this story.

Barnes also has this article on the verbal sparring between Arthur Miller and Justice Scalia during yesterday’s oral arguments; AP writer Mark Sherman has this report. At the WSJ.com Law Blog, Peter Lattman reports here on Tellabs.

Steve Chapman of the Chicago Tribune has this column on the Leegin price fixing case.

UPDATE 8 p.m. The government’s brief in opposition has now been filed. It can be found here. It urges the Court to deny the Hamdan/Khadr petition or, as an alternative, to hold it until the other detainee appeals have been resolved. The brief also argues that the joint petition of two detainees involving two different cases and two different lower courts may not be a proper filing under the Court’s rules, It suggests that the two detainees can file papers in the other detainee cases (if those are granted) to make any argument they would assert in their own appeal.
In addition, a group of present and former members of the British Parliament and the European Parliament filed an amicus brief, arguing that the new Military Commissions Act’s court-stripping provisions “fundamentally offend the rule of law and contravene treaties by which the United States is bound and upon which it is built.” That brief is here.

Lawyers for Salim Ahmed Hamdan, facing a war crimes trial before a U.S. military commission, have asked the Supreme Court to consider his appeal on his legal rights at its private Conference on Friday of this week. After the Court had refused on March 5 to expedite the appeal on its calendar, it had appeared that the case would not be ready for early consideration. Hamdan’s lawyers have now suggested reasons for taking it up promptly.

In a letter to the Court on Wednesday (found here), Hamdan’s counsel asked that the Court consider Hamdan’s appeal (Hamdan v. Gates, 06-1169) this week along with two other appeals by Guantanamo Bay detainees who are challenging their detention. Those cases, along with motions to expedite in each, will be before the Justices at the Friday Conference. (If any order emerges from the Conference on Friday, this blog will post it promptly.)

Hamdan’s appeal involves, in addition to him, another Guantanamo detainee who is facing a war crimes charge — Omar Khadr (his part of the petition is Khadr v. Bush). Hamdan’s appeal is from a District Court ruling dismissing his case under the new Military Commissions Act of 2006, and asks the Justices to hear the case without waiting for a D.C. Circuit ruling on an appeal that Hamdan also has pending there. Khadr’s part of the appeal asks the Court to review the D.C. Circuit’s Feb. 20 ruling using the MCA to dismiss all detainees’ pending habeas cases. That Circuit Court ruling is the same one that is at issue in the two other appeals — Boumediene v. Bush (06-1195) and Al Odah v. U.S. (06-1169).

In Wednesday’s letter, the Court was advised of the guilty plea on Monday of another detainee before a military commission — Australian David Hicks. His was the first military commission trial to open.

Hicks was one of the detainees involved in the other appeals the Court is ready to consider. The Justice Department had suggested to the Court, in opposing quick action on the Hamdan/Khadr appeal, that Hicks could raise issues about detainees facing military commission trials as part of the other appeals. The letter quotes the government’s earlier suggestion that, if the Court wished to consider how the Military Commissions Act applied to detainees facing commission trials, it could do so in the other cases.

With Hicks’ guilty plea this week, Hamdan’s lawyers said that would “preclude this Court’s consideration of the military commission matters in the context” of the other appeals. Only the Hamdan/Khadr petition, the letter added, “presents the Court with the opportunity to fully resolve at this time the challenges to the status of the Guantanamo detainees.”

The letter also argued that the Court should act soon on detainees facing war crimes trials because those are going forward under the D.C. Circuit ruling in February holding that detainees have no constitutional rights to pursue in federal court.

Finally, the letter notified the Court that the D.C. Circuit has put Hamdan’s pending appeal there on hold until the Supreme Court acts on his petition to the Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, the Justice Department was scheduled to file later Thursday its formal response to the Hamdan/Khadr petition. Earlier, it opposed expedited consideration of that petition, but it did not seek additional time to file its response, which was thus due today. (When the brief becomes available, it will be posted here.)

In another development, eight constitutional law professors and a former federal judge, William S. Sessions, filed an amicus brief urging the Court to hear the Hamdan case promptly (download here). “This case presents constitutional issues of exceptional importance and urgency warranting this Court’s review” without awaiting further action in the D.C.Circuit on Hamdan’s case. The brief contains a broad challenge to the Circuit Court ruling dismissing Guantanamo habeas cases under the Commissions Act, and to the Act itself. The Act’s court-stripping provision, the brief contends, violates the Constitution’s limit on suspending the writ of habeas corpus, and intrudes on the Supreme Court’s Article III powers.

In connection with a possible news appearance, I have been asked to identify the most important cases for this Term. The obvious candidates, of course, are the school diversity and partial birth abortion cases. But are there any dark-horse candidates out there that might be quite significant, but that have received little public attention or news coverage? Please feel free to post in the comments or to e-mail me directly. I look forward to your comments on this question.

No oral arguments are scheduled and no non-capital orders or opinions are expected to be issued today.

In the Wall Street Journal, Mark H. Anderson reports here (subscription req’d) on today’s argument regarding standards for securities class-action lawsuits; AP writer Marcy Gordon has this article. At the WSJ.com Law Blog, Peter Lattman has this preview of Tellabs Inc. v. Makor Issues & Rights Ltd; James P. Miller reports here in the Chicago Tribune. Yesterday, Jess Bravin and Lattman had this article (subscription req’d) in the Wall Street Journal discussing both Tellabs and Credit Suisse v. Billing.

Aaron Streett’s latest edition of “Supreme Court Today,” covering yesterday’s opinions and grants, is here. Paul Secunda of Workplace Prof Blog reports here on the Court’s decision in Rockwell.

In the Legal Times, Tony Mauro’s latest Courtside column is here, discussing Martin Garbus’s new book, “The Next 25 Years: The New Supreme Court and What It Means for Americans.”

At the Antitrust Review, Manfred Gabriel has this post on the forthcoming decision in Twombly and David Fischer has this analysis of the oral argument in Leegin Creative Leather Products, Inc. v. PSKS, Inc.

Rick Hasen of Election Law Blog recently posted a draft of his paper, “The Untimely Death of Bush v. Gore,” here on SSRN.

At Concurring Opinions, Melissa Waters has this post on the Supreme Court’s decision last term in Sanchez-Llamas v. Oregon and what it reveals about Chief Justice Roberts; and Alice Ristroph has this post discussing the Court’s opinions in Lochner v. New York and Jacobson v. Massachusetts and their relation to the state’s interest in preserving individual lives.

Here, at Sentencing Law and Policy, Doug Berman previews the Federal Sentencing Reporter’s latest issue, entitled “Claiborne & Rita: Reasonableness Review in the Supreme Court.”

The transcript in Telllabs v. Makor is now available here.

Beginning at 10 AM eastern, the Court will hear one hour of oral argument in Tellabs v. Makor Issues and Rights (preview here). A transcript should be available sometime this afternoon.

No opinions on the merits are expected to be released.

The following argument preview was written by Anitha Reddy of the Stanford Supreme Court Litigation Clinic.

Tomorrow in Tellabs, Inc. v. Makor Issues & Rights, Ltd. (No. 06-484), the Court will consider how strictly courts should interpret the heightened pleading requirements of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act (PSLRA) when ruling on a motion to dismiss a securities fraud complaint. The case asks whether a court must weigh competing inferences of innocence in determining whether the plaintiff has alleged facts sufficient to give rise to a “strong inference” that – as mandated by the Act – the defendant acted with the required state of mind.

Carter G. Phillips of Sidley Austin in Washington, D.C. will argue on behalf of petitioners Tellabs and Notebaert. Professor Arthur Miller of Harvard Law School will argue on behalf of the respondent shareholders. Assistant to the Solicitor General Kannon Shanmugam will argue for the United States as an amicus in support of Tellabs. The briefs of both parties along with some of the amicus briefs, including that of the United States, are available here.

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UPDATE 2: 6:05 PM: Texas’s brief opposing Supreme Court review can now be found here. The post below now includes some discussion of the arguments Texas makes.

UPDATE: 2:45 PM: The Solicitor General’s amicus brief discussed in this post can now be found here.

The Bush Administration, continuing its sturdy defense of presidential powers, has urged the Supreme Court to rule that President Bush had the authority to direct state courts to obey a decision of the World Court bearing on state criminal prosecutions. The state of Texas disputed that plea in urging the Court not to hear again a case that was before the Justices in 2005, but did not produce a ruling at that time.

In an amicus filing in the case of Medellin v. Texas (06-984), the government called for reversal of a Texas state court ruling that Bush did not have the power to ensure that state courts complied with the international tribunal’s decision on the rights of foreign nationals arrested and prosecuted within the U.S. for crimes here. The state argued in response that the case is moot because Medellin has had access to the courts in Texas to challenge his conviction, and that is all that the World Court ruling required. While Texas challenges the Buish Administration’s assertion of executive power, it suggests that that question, too, is moot.

The Vienna Convention on Consular Relations gives such foreign nationals a right to meet with a diplomatic officer from his or her home country when arrested in another country. The World Court (the International Court of Justice at The Hague) ruled that the U.S. government must take steps to assure that 51 Mexican nationals Iincluding Medellin) who were prosecuted in the U.S. had that right, despite state court rules that barred them from relying upon the Convention in challenging their convictions.

The government’s brief was filed last Thursday but has just now become publicly available. Similarly, the state’s brief in opposition, filed last week, is now publicly available.

The government supports the appeal of Jose Ernesto Medellin, a Mexican national who was convicted of a double rape and murder in Houston in 1993. Medellin claims that his consular access rights were violated, but he has been denied a chance to press that claim, both by the Fifth Circuit Court and by Texas’ highest criminal court. In the most recent decision, last Nov. 15, the Texas state court found he had failed to raise that issue properly as his case unfolded in state court. Medellin’s appeal to the Justices was filed on January 16.

Medellin’s appeal is also supported by the Mexican government and by a group of law professors who are experts on World Court matters.

The case has not yet been scheduled for a Conference of the Justices. It is expected to go to the Justices sometime in April, after Medellin’s counsel has filed a reply.

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Amgen Inc. has recently filed this new cert. petition in the case of Amgen v. Hoechst Marion Roussel, Inc., et al. On appeal from the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the petition, docketed as 06-1291, raises two issues pertaining to patent law (full question presented after the jump).

Roy Englert, Jr. of Robbins, Russell, Englert, Orseck & Untereiner is counsel of record.

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At Market Watch, Mark H. Anderson has this article on today’s argument in Credit Suisse v. Billing; Christopher S. Rugaber of the Associated Press reports here.

AP writer Mark Sherman has this report on the Court’s decision in Rockwell clarifying the False Claims Act; Greg Stohr reports here at Bloomberg. Stohr also has this article on the Court’s slower pace in issuing rulings this year. At the BLT, Tony Mauro has this post on the “molasses-like” pace.

Mauro also has this article in the Legal Times about Justice Scalia and Justice Alito’s participation in Morse v. Frederick, given that the petitioner’s counsel, Kenneth Starr, is also their summer employer.

In today’s Washington Post, Robert Barnes has this article on yesterday’s argument in Leegin Creative Leather Products Inc. v. PSKS Inc.; USA Today’s Joan Biskupic reports here; Linda Greenhouse of the New York Times has this report; and in the LA Times, David G. Savage reports here.

Also in the LA Times, Savage has this article on the Court’s decision to grant review of a child pornography law; James Vicini reports here for Reuters.

In the Christian Science Monitor, Warren Richey reports here on the Supreme Court’s decision not to review a grandparent visitation ruling.

Finally, at Balkinization Brain Tamanaha has this post on objectivity and judicial restraint in constitutional law and Jack Balkin continues the discussion on citing Dred Scott here.

The Supreme Court has now made available the written transcript of today’s oral argument in the case of Credit Suisse v. Billing (No. 05-1157). It can be found here.